


Truer Than I

by crookedfingers



Category: World's Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, appearances by everyone else - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-07-11 14:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7056706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedfingers/pseuds/crookedfingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benjamin was well settled into his life. He did his best to get by, and that was all. People came and people went, and he didn't expect much of anything. </p><p>Least of all did he expect that the new farmer on Noah Hayseed's old property would make any difference to a ten-year-old wound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Noah Hayseed’s property sold in midwinter to a stranger. It’d been a bad year and a hard season; the sale was unexpected. The buyer was from a place no one had heard of, and Paxel had met him in a place that was far from Sugar Blossom. He was scheduled to move into the farm on the first day of the new year, and he wasn’t married. Within a day of the sale clearing, everyone in town knew his name, and the corresponding gossip was enough to sustain the whole town for the rest of the year.

The weather broke after that. An early spring dawned on them suddenly, like a gasp from someone just coming up from underwater. It was a good omen, people said.

On the day the farmer moved in, there were only rivulets where snowbanks had recently stood. 

Benjamin didn’t think it was reasonable to make assumptions about people based on the weather.

He couldn’t bring himself to visit the farm. Noah and Emma Hayseed had been his closest neighbors for years and some of the best people he’d ever known. He wasn’t ready to see someone living in their house.

But the farmer didn’t come to the carpentry shop, either: not on the first day he moved in, or the day after, or the day after that. Benjamin tried not to hold it against him. The fields had gone fallow while the farm stood empty; he had plenty of work ahead of him. Benjamin could respect that. But within a few days Benjamin seemed to be the sole exception to those who’d made the farmer’s acquaintance. Hunter met him almost at once—met his dog, even—and everyone at the Midnight Tavern talked about him, and customers who came to the carpentry shop talked about him, and Benjamin saw him through the windows nearly every day, going this way and that way with a fishing pole or a battered old mining pickaxe balanced on his shoulder, and still he hadn’t stopped to introduce himself.

He was not, Benjamin concluded, as friendly as everyone made him out to be. They were just excited to have a new face at the old farm; they wanted to like him because the alternative was too unfortunate to accept. Benjamin listened and nodded along when Hunter talked about him over dinner, but there was nothing for him to say. He was glad the Hayseeds’ farm wasn’t wasting away, and he hoped the farmer did a decent job of it, and that was all there was to it. They’d meet each other sooner or later, because it was a small town and farmers always needed things, and the shop might make a bit of money off him. Benjamin didn’t expect much else.

And so they met one morning a week or two into spring, while Hunter was out collecting wood from trees that hadn’t survived the winter. Benjamin had just moved the shop sign to “Open” and retreated to his work bench when he heard the door unlatch. Most people didn’t visit until after lunch, and Benjamin usually spent the first half of the day working uninterrupted. He heaved himself up, slightly displeased, and when he reached the main counter he found the farmer standing inside his doorway. He was holding the old pickaxe vertically, the iron pick resting on the floor so he could lean down and scruff at Boot’s neck, who’d heaved herself up against his leg in pursuit of attention. He was fairly tall: maybe Benjamin’s height, though it was hard to judge while he was stooped over. He had dark cowlicks of hair, and ropey brown arms, and even from a distance Benjamin could see that his knuckles were all scabbed over from recent scrapes. 

“You can just step over her,” Benjamin said. “Boots, show some dignity.”

The farmer raised his eyes and flashed Benjamin a smile that showed all his teeth: an expression so open and unguarded that Benjamin was taken aback. “Just making ourselves acquainted. Speaking of which…” He straightened, shifting the pickaxe into his other hand, and crossed the floor with a couple of long steps. He was taller than Benjamin had estimated. “I’m Sawyer. I’ve moved into the homestead west of here. Sorry it’s taken so long to say hello.”

Sawyer leaned across the counter and offered a hand. There were more old scars on his arm than Benjamin could quickly count. His hands were freshly washed, but there was dark soil and grit ground into the grooves around his fingernails: the same places where Benjamin had permanent stains of oil and varnish. Boots gave Benjamin a sour look as she settled on the floor, stuck a leg straight into the air, and began to groom her belly like it was her sole interest in life.

“Benjamin. Good to meet you.” He grasped Sawyer’s hand and they exchanged a quick, firm shake. “You’ve been busy, I’m sure. Was there somethin’ you came here for?”

“Well.” Sawyer gave the pickaxe a little pat, like it was a well-loved but unruly dog. “I’ve been working a bit in the mine near here, but this thing barely makes a dent despite being about half my body weight, and it’s killing my shoulder. Your nephew said you’d be the man to talk to about getting some better equipment.”

A pickaxe wasn’t a complicated tool, but that didn’t make it easy to use. There were a dozen ways for a person to injure themselves—and that was only counting the straightforward possibilities—if they lacked the strength, finesse, or experience. Whoever had decided to hand him a hunk of wood and sharpened metal may have been comfortable trusting a stranger to handle himself, but Sawyer was just a greenhorn without any previous farming experience, and Benjamin didn’t want any stupid injuries on his conscious. 

“Here, let me see that,” he grunted, gesturing for the pickaxe.

Sawyer held it out with both hands, one hand cradling the head while the other held the shaft in perfect horizontal balance. It was a deceptively smooth gesture, the weight of the pickaxe distributed so evenly between his hands that the tool appeared lightweight and easy to handle despite the sheer mass of the big iron spike. That one motion alone told Benjamin that Sawyer already knew the pickaxe well, and he handled it with a certain respect and caution. Benjamin took the pickaxe from him one handed to test its heaviness, and the weight made his entire arm sag.

“I think I’ve got somethin’ that’ll help.” Benjamin motioned for Sawyer to follow and led him around to another countertop where a steel-bladed pickaxe rested on display. He placed the battered old pickaxe next to it for comparison, and Sawyer laughed softly. It was like judging a mule next to a war horse.

“Go ahead and pick that one up,” Benjamin said.

Sawyer lifted the steel pickaxe with both hands and made a small, appreciative noise. He thumbed at the pick and chisel and practiced a slow swinging motion. The steel head gleamed and flashed under the light. He shook his head, slow and regretful. “No, no, this is too way nice. I’d feel bad about battering it all to hell.”

“That’s what it’s made for,” Benjamin said. “And don’t feel too bad; it’ll rough you up, first, before you’ve gotten used to it.”

“Ah, now you’ve found my weakness,” Sawyer said, eyes crinkling up at the corners with another wide smile. “How can I turn down a challenge of wills? How much do I owe you, then? —Wait, sorry, hold that thought for a second.”

Sawyer replaced the pickaxe and sidled over to a stoppered glass jar, sitting a little further inside the shop, that had evidently caught his eye. It was a somewhat crude piece; Benjamin had never taken to glass the same way he had wood and metal, but there was no critiquing its sturdiness. Sawyer glanced at Benjamin for permission, which was granted with a nod, before he picked up the jar and turned it over in his hands. The bottom widened out so it could sit more stably upright, and it had a thick cork stopper. Sawyer returned to where Benjamin was standing, the jar cradled in his hands. “How much is this? I’m not sure I’ve got enough for it right now, but maybe next week…”

“Together they’re six hundred, if you’re leavin’ that old pickaxe here.”

Sawyer’s face brightened with relief. “You’ve got a deal.”

As Benjamin wrapped the jar in canvas to keep it safely cushioned, Sawyer continued to wander around the shop, examining everything on display. Benjamin had seen the state of Sawyer’s wallet as he’d paid and knew very well that Sawyer was only looking for the sake of politeness and couldn’t afford any other impulse purchases. Benjamin kept him in the corner of his eye, though, to watch for reactions. He liked to know what people thought of his work. Sawyer paused a couple of times to look more carefully at one thing or another, but he didn’t pick anything else up as he wove around Boots’ renewed attempts to place herself between his feet.

But as Sawyer completed his circuit of the shop and began to approach the counter again, something else did catch his interest, and he swerved off course to examine it: one of the big woven carpets propped up in a corner. It wasn’t a good way to display them, but keeping them rolled up was the only way to spare them from Boots’ claws.

Sawyer peeled back a corner of the bundle to study the carpet’s woven surface, but he was careful to touch only the very edge and bottom of the carpet. It was the color of fresh cream from summer milk, with a fine, tight weave. 

“This is nice,” Sawyer commented, voice low. Boots took advantage of his lack of movement to headbutt his ankle. Then she reached out to hook her claws on the carpet, and Sawyer had to gently scoot her aside with his foot.

“Should’ve seen my first attempts,” Benjamin said. It was a bad habit of his: evading compliments for anything he didn’t consider his best work.

“You made it?” Sawyer folded the corner of the carpet back into place as though he’d disturbed a slumbering animal. “This is really something, Benjamin.”

“It’s nothin’ elaborate.”

Sawyer shook his head. “Don’t sell yourself short. As soon as I’ve got my feet under me, I’m coming back for this. I’m kind of living hand-to-mouth right now, but I’d really like to have it.”

“I’ll set it aside for you,” Benjamin offered before he knew what he was saying. It wasn’t sensible in the slightest, but he couldn’t take it back once he’d said it. Sawyer might know how to handle a pickaxe, but impulsiveness wasn’t generally a good trait in a farmer. Indulging him after he’d run himself broke on his very first visit to the shop wasn’t practical. If Sawyer didn’t already now it, he’d soon have to learn that some things could only be obtained at the right time under the right set of circumstances, and trying to bargain with the circumstances you had rather than the ones you needed wouldn’t always work our favorably. But Benjamin was in a neighborly sort of mood, apparently, and he was somewhat pleased to see Sawyer’s face light up with gratitude.

“Just tell me if you change your mind,” Benjamin continued, nudging the canvas-wrapped bottle farther forward on the counter to remind Sawyer it was ready to go. Sawyer took the cue with a smile, stepping forward to slip the jar into the rucksack slung over his shoulder. He picked up the new pickaxe, as well.

“No, way. I’m completely serious. I should probably get back to work, but this won’t be the last you see of me. Maybe I’ll catch you at the Midnight Tavern?”

“I drop in sometimes,” Benjamin said, steadfastly noncommittal. 

“Good! I’ll look forward to it. I’d like to have a conversation sometime when you’re not busy. It was great to finally meet you. You, too, Boots.” The little cat had leapt onto the counter and stretched out to scrape her cheek against Sawyer’s arm. “I’ll see you around, but—well, thank you, Benjamin.”

Sawyer extended a hand for a departing handshake, all earnest and well meaning, and Benjamin managed to complete the gesture out of pure reflex. He was a little dazed by the entire encounter. Then Sawyer gave one final, beaming smile and turned to leave. He’d just put his hand on the door knob when Benjamin said, “Wait.”

Benjamin walked quickly into the back room of the shop. When he came back, he was holding the old digging spade that’d been languishing there amongst the scraps and spare parts. He’d had to break it free from a flimsy prison of cob webs and wipe it down. Benjamin met Sawyer at the door and pressed the spade into his hands. Sawyer just looked at it, uncomprehending.

“Um,” he said.

“Take it,” Benjamin said. “It’s beat up, but it’s plenty sturdy. It’ll do you more good than it’s doin’ me. It’s useful for plenty of things. If you do any fishin’, you can dig up good bait.”

“That’s really generous of you,” Sawyer said with one of his big, full-toothed smiles. “I owe you one.”

“Nah,” Benjamin grunted, making a dismissive motion at the spade like Sawyer was the one doing him favor by taking it. “That’s just to trade for the pickaxe you left behind.”

“You already gave me a discount for that,” Sawyer pointed out.

“Don’t make me argue about it.” Benjamin retreated to his usual station behind the counter and stood there with his arms folded to indicate the finality of his decision. “You’re burnin’ up daylight with all this chit-chat, farmer. Better be gettin’ back to work.”

“Hey, now. Don’t think I didn’t notice you taking advantage of all this friendly small-town small talk to take a break.” Sawyer followed up the comment with an exaggerated wink involving fully half of his face to show that there was no harm meant. Benjamin just snorted at him, but he could feel one corner of his mouth pulling itself upward in defiance of the rest of his body language.

Ten minutes later, when Hunter shouldered his way through the door and then stopped short, looking at him in astonishment, Benjamin realized that half of his mouth was still doing something against his permission, and he’d been standing there smiling the whole time like a damn lollygagging fool. He fought the rogue expression under control before Hunter could actually comment.

“Did you meet Sawyer?” Hunter asked eagerly, wiping sweat from his forehead. “I saw him a minute ago, and it looked like he had a new pickaxe.”

“Haven’t seen anyone all mornin’.”

“What?” Hunter’s face fell into such a tragic display of confusion that Benjamin immediately abandoned the joke and began to laugh.

“’Course I met him. He took that glass bottle I’ve been tryin’ to sell, too. Thanks for gettin’ us the business.”

“Oh - thanks! I mean, you’re welcome!” Neither of them was very good at handling praise. “Well, I just wanted to say that I restocked the woodpile. You want me to start on those chair legs next?”

“That’d be good. But gimme a hand with that carpet there, first. I wanna move it out of the way for awhile.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, I'm not completely certain whether Benjamin ever brings up any specific details about his wife in dialogue, so this work may not be canon-compliant. I love falsifying information.

Benjamin arrived late to the Misty Music Festival. He’d wavered over the decision to attend until the last possible moment—and then a few moments longer. By that point, Hunter had long since gone on ahead. 

He'd attended the festival only two or three times during the past decade. There were already enough reminders of his wife’s death without thinking about the Shepherd and the Princess, and what all the stories and the dances and the other traditions had meant to them. But Sawyer had been named as the year’s Shepherd as a sort of rite of initiation, and Benjamin felt responsible for delivering a certain level of community support. Skipping the festival, he concluded, would reflect poorly upon the whole town, and that thought finally spurred him to action.

The noise from the plaza hit him well before he’d reached it, and there was an almost giddy intensity to the music, and the clapping, and the shouts of encouragement. There hadn't been a completely new Shepherd for a long time.

Sawyer was sharing the stage with Senah, which took Benjamin by surprise, even though he hadn't thought at all about who the other participant would be. Senah had never dated anyone in town, and she wasn’t showy or interested in theatrics. But she was a long-term resident, so she knew the dance as well as she knew the alphabet. Her movements were confident but casual; when people cheered, she laughed right along with them, tossing her head. But she kept a careful eye on Sawyer, glancing over frequently to make sure that they were still in alignment. Next to her, Sawyer was sweating bullets, considerably less self-assured, but he grinned at her every time their eyes met. Despite his unmistakable anxiety, he kept up with the dance’s swift pace. Benjamin saw him mis-step twice, though he recovered quickly. But by the end of the dance the two of them had fallen into natural sync, every motion flowing seamlessly into the next, and he whipped Senah around the stage as though nothing were more natural. They struck the last few steps of the dance in perfect unison, and, amidst an uproar of applause, Sawyer executed a deep-waisted bow and kissed Senah’s hands. She laughed and patted the top of his head in return. Someone wolf whistled in approval.

The crowd pressed in toward the stage as the performers clambered down. They were breathing hard and smiling, both of them shining with sweat. Sawyer’s laugh rang out in response to some comment Benjamin couldn’t hear, and he danced a couple of steps in a parody of his own performance. Everyone seemed to want to touch him, like a good luck charm. People clapped him on the back or shoulder; they shook his hand; they ruffled his hair. Both Amber and Cole hugged him, and Amber kissed him on each cheek.

The rest of the festival was typically informal, and most people spent their time gossiping or drinking. Sometimes people danced. Cole returned to the piano and began to play a variation on an old Northern ballad, and Amber started to dance beside him, swirling her skirt and striking her toes against the cobblestones with every other brisk step. Madison began to clap along to the tune, and Alexander pulled Mono into an energetic waltz that was completely out of time with Cole’s song. But Sawyer remained at the center of attention of the pairs and small groups still loosely clustered around him. Senah, for her part, took advance of Sawyer’s popularity to creep out of the center of the crowd and take up station next to Brynn, who immediately handed her a bottle of beer. Senah saluted her with it.

His civic duty completed, Benjamin readied himself to leave, but Quint spotted him from a distance and put up a hand in greeting. Orion waved for him to come closer, and Benjamin picked his way over to them. Maia was sitting dutifully beside Quint’s feet, but she leaned forward to bump her wet nose against Benjamin’s hand, and her tail gave a few little thumps of greeting. Benjamin reciprocated with a pat between her ears.

“Speak of the devil!” Quint said jovially. “We were just wondering if you were here. Did you catch the whole thing?”

Benjamin nodded. “Not bad.”

“That’s a high compliment from you,” Quint laughed.

“Are you free right now?” Orion asked. “I was planning to invite a few people back to the tavern for drinks. We’re not really interested in any more dancing. Hunter would be welcome to join, of course.”

“Kind of you to ask, but there’s some work I want to get done.”

Quint and Orion exchanged glances. “Working on a festival day?” Quint asked. They were doing their best to sound casual: not too pushy, not too concerned. Benjamin appreciated the sentiment, even if he couldn’t endure the offer.

“We wouldn’t keep you any longer than you wanted to stay,” Orion insisted. 

“Thank you, but I’d like to get ahead on some things. Have an extra drink on my behalf.”

Both of them knew that if Benjamin wasn’t convinced of something after the first attempt, there was no sense in arguing further. Quint heaved his shoulders in a begrudging shrug, and Orion spoke up to say, “Well, promise that you’ll take a real break one of these days.”

“I’ll do that,” Benjamin said, peeling himself away from their little group.

Half way across the plaza, he saw Hunter talking to Sparrow, both of them laughing about something, and Benjamin set off toward them. Though the plaza was not exceptionally large, the journey caused him to cross paths with Logan, Violet, and Seth, all of whom stopped him to say hello and exchange pleasantries. Generally, he enjoyed conversations with them, but the festival had put him a peculiar mood, and all of his responses were brief and nondescript. None of them tried to talk to him for long. And then, his goal almost reached, someone stepped backwards and bumped into him from the side. 

“Oops,” Sawyer said, turning. His hair was disheveled, and there was sweat shining at his temples and throat. He smiled at Benjamin like they were the oldest of friends. “This town really knows how to put people through the ropes.”

“Got to make sure you’re tough enough to handle it," Benjamin said.

“I don’t know if ‘tough’ is what I’m feeling right now, but if that was a test, I hope I passed.” He raked damp coils of hair back from his forehead. “Have you ever danced as the Shepherd?”

Benjamin answered automatically, before he could have any thoughts or feelings: “Many times, with my wife.”

The slightest trace of an unidentifiable expression rippled across Sawyer's face, there and gone so quickly that Benjamin would have missed it if he'd blinked. “You’ll have to give me tips sometimes, then.”

Benjamin was spared from answering by Amber, who swept suddenly in upon Sawyer. “I know they make you feel very important, but I’m going to have to take the Shepherd’s clothes back from you now. We don’t want any repeats of the Wine Incident from a few years ago. Here, bend down; you’re too tall.”

“At least wait until I’m not in public,” Sawyer pleaded, laughing, but Amber said “no!” as she began to wrestle with the clasp of his cloak. Benjamin took advantage of the distraction to slip away. He left the plaza without speaking to anyone else.

Hunter caught up with him out on the edge of town, jogging to close the distance.

“Sorry, I didn’t notice you were leaving!” he panted as they fell into stride together. Their feet crunched down on the road together in complete unison. “Zachary asked me to say ‘hi.’ Oh, and Liam wanted to remind you about your check-up appointment next week, but…”

“Didn’t forget,” Benjamin said shortly. “You’ve been invited to the Midnight, by the way. Did Orion tell you?”

“Oh! No, I didn’t talk to him. Well, um, if you were planning to work on one of the current orders, I can help. I’m almost done with the bookcase, so…”

“I’ll be fine. Go on back, if you want.”

Hunter slowed down, then stopped walking. He was quiet for a second or two. “I won’t stay out too late.”

“It’s fine. Go on.”

Hunter nodded seriously and turned back toward town, and Benjamin picked his way onward through the dark.

* * *

Two days later, Benjamin walked into the Midnight Tavern to find Sawyer lounging up against the bar next to Alexander, who was balancing his stool on two legs. Brynn was working the register, and she was the first person to notice him. She waved him over to the bar before he could escape straight to a table. 

“Hi, Ben!” she chirped. “Are you here for dinner? Can I get you the usual?”

“Thank you, Brynn.”

Sawyer leaned forward at once and said, “Actually, can you put his order on my tab?”

“You got it!”

Benjamin opened his mouth to protest, but Alexander was already talking over him: “I think I saw you at the festival, Benjamin, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything. I was thinking about ordering a wardrobe for Mono for our anniversary, which is comin' up here in just three months! Do you think that’s enough time, or…?”

“We can make it work.”

“Oh, great! That’s good! Have you ever built anything with secret compartments? I have some notes with a few ideas, and I was thinking maybe a bird-of-paradise design—”

“If you’ve got notes, you can bring them to the shop to talk it over. I’ll be there all day tomorrow. You can some in after hours if that’ll help you keep it a secret. I’m not liable to remember much if we get into it now.”

“Oh, yeah, sure! I just wanted to bring it up now because I don’t get many chances to talk to you without Mono around.”

“Hey, Ben, do you want to eat here at the bar, or are you going to a table?” Brynn cut in, returning from relaying Benjamin’s order to the kitchen. She grabbed a glass from under the counter, pulled a pint of Northern brew from the tap, and passed it to him between Sawyer and Alexander’s elbows.

“I’ll take a table, thanks.”

Sawyer straightened out of his languid slouch. “Would you mind if I joined you? I just ordered some food a minute ago.”

As though he could turn away someone who was paying for his meal. “Don’t mean to take you away from your conversation,” he said, nodding to Alexander.

“Go ahead!” Alexander said. “I’m actually just about to leave.”

So Benjamin made his way to his usual table and sat. Sawyer trailed after him, holding a drink: one of the strong, sweet-smelling mixtures that Brynn loved to make. Benjamin didn’t really have the stomach for that much alcohol.

“Uh, I don’t mean to intrude. It’s fine if you want to eat alone.”

Benjamin shrugged and used his foot to push the chair opposite him away from the table. Sawyer pulled the chair out farther and dropped into it. Benjamin expected him to start talking right away, but he didn’t. He was clearly thinking about it, though: his mouth kept opening around unvoiced sounds, but instead of speaking, he just took hasty gulps of his rum concoction. The glass was drained down to a meager puddle an astonishingly short and unhealthy span of time. Benjamin wasn’t much good at starting conversations, but he figured he’d have to do something before the man ordered a second drink and gave himself alcohol poisoning.

So he took a sip of his beer and said, “Senah’s a nice lady.”

Sawyer looked up, a bit startled. “Yeah, she is.” His expression relaxed somewhat, but the grip on his glass was still tight enough to turn his knuckles white. What was he so nervous about? “She was great at the festival, wasn’t she? I really owe her one. She didn’t want to be the Princess, but she understood why I didn’t want to ask any of the other women in town.”

Benjamin, however, did not understand. He looked at Sawyer for a moment, weighing the likelihood of causing offense, and then said, cautiously, “You don’t have to dance with a woman.”

Sawyer just shrugged. “Options weren’t good all ‘round. Dr. Liam is a little closer in age, I think, but even so…”

“Age?” Benjamin repeated, dumbly. Did he mean that he was older than Liam? Benjamin scrutinized his face. Bullshit. There wasn’t a single wrinkle on him. 

Sawyer, noticing that he was being studied, grinned a little over the rim of his glass. “I’m flattered that you think I’m so young, but I’m at least as close to your age as I am any of the unmarried people in this town. And apparently it’s very frowned upon for the Prince to dance with anyone who’s already spoken for, so I didn’t have many appropriate options who were both willing and, ah, appropriate.”

Benjamin did not think that he wanted to start talking about with whom it would be appropriate for Sawyer to dance, so he opted for the time-tested method of redirection: “Well, not sure if _I’m_ flattered by how old you think _I_ am.”

Sawyer’s eyes went wide, and for a split second he looked genuinely horrified. Then he began to laugh in a relieved sort of way. “Touché! Sorry, I just meant—well, nevermind. I guess I don’t always act my age, do I?”

“I don’t know; you haven’t said what your age is.”

It was at that moment that Indigo arrived from the kitchen bearing their food: a plate of fried potatoes and a cutlet, and a steaming ceramic dish full of sliced and roasted vegetables still bubbling in some kind of sauce or gravy. 

Indigo gestured at Sawyer’s now-empty glass. “Want a refill on that?”

Sawyer looked surprised to discover that he’d almost finished his drink. He thought deeply about his answer, brow furrowed. “Yeah, sure. Thank you.”

While we waited for his refill, Sawyer leaned forward to peer into Benjamin’s glass. “What’re you drinking, by the way?”

“Local take on a Northern beer. Brewed in house. Pretty authentic, accordin’ to Amber.”

“It smells good. Sort of, mm, toasty? I’ve just been drinking whatever Brynn recommends, so… mostly a lot of rum.”

It didn’t make sense for Benjamin to offer to buy Sawyer a pint, not when he was the one paying for Benjamin’s dinner and still had a formidable quantity of rum with which to contend. So Benjamin simply pushed his glass a couple of inches forward across the table. Thankfully, Sawyer understood the intention immediately. He accepted a single small sip and lingered over it for a moment before swallowing. The glass came sliding back in Benjamin’s direction, the crest of foam heaving atop tiny wave.

“That’s really good. I see why you like it.”

Indigo came back with more rum for Sawyer, and Benjamin focused on eating. He’d missed lunch altogether, and he was ravenous, but eating was an excuse not to talk, so he took small bites and counted how many times he chewed each one and looked at places other than Sawyer. Having broken the ice once, his sociability reserves were now depleted, and he hoped that if Sawyer actually wanted to talk, _he_ would accept the burden of restarting the conversation. But Sawyer had lapsed back into that same uneasy silence. He was disemboweling his food more than eating it, his eyes focused unseeingly on the table, the second glass of rum rapidly going the way of the first.

Benjamin was just starting to worry about what he should do after he ran out of food when Sawyer cleared his throat and set down his silverware.

“Actually, I wanted to apologize for my comment at the festival.”

Benjamin’s mind lurched in confusion. They’d barely spoken. What could Sawyer possibly have to apologize for? 

He said, “oh?”

“Yeah. You mentioned your wife, and I just made a joke and moved on.” Sawyer’s face had gone intent and serious. He picked up his glass and then put it back down without drinking. The surface of the liquid shivered. “I didn’t know that— Well, I should also apologize for not talking to you about it directly. I’d noticed that you, um, don’t wear a wedding ring, but when you mentioned your wife at the festival, you— I don’t know how to explain it, but you sounded different. Like you were talking about someone who was actually present. You know? And I figured that I’d just guessed wrong about you being married. Maybe you didn’t wear the ring because you work with your hands. Something like that. So I brought it up in a conversation with Hunter. I asked if your wife worked out of town, like Madison’s husband. I shouldn’t have asked anyone else about it, I know, but people here are so friendly that I kind of lose track of the boundaries between ordinary small talk and conversations that are actually personal. 

“So I wanted to apologize for being insensitive, and for prying into your life. It wasn't intentional, but I don't want to ruin any chance of a friendship. I… I guess it just seemed important to let you know that Hunter told me about Nadia, in case you ever decided to tell me, yourself. I’d want to know if someone knew a personal detail about me before I told them about it, you know?”

At some point, Benjamin had lifted his glass almost to his mouth and forgotten to take a drink. The foam was close enough to ripple with his breath. He forced himself to take a mouthful, and then another one. There wasn’t much secrecy in a small town. It would have come up eventually. Maybe it was even a good thing that it’d happened this way. He wouldn’t have to work himself up to having the conversation, to finding the “right moment.” But his fingertips felt numb. The hands that he was using to hold his glass and grip the edge of the table did not seem to belong to him. They did things when he wanted them to—picking up his fork, spearing a piece of potato—but there was no physical feedback from them. No sense of connection.

“It’s been ten years,” he said at last.

This was a response he’d learned to give after the first few years. It implied a certain degree of emotional distance—the idea that he was “better”—without actually meaning anything of the sort. Benjamin didn’t give real answers when people asked him how he was doing. He just told them how much time had passed (five years, eight years, ten) and let them draw their own conclusions. People read into that answer the kind of meaning they wanted to hear: progress, healing, recovery. That was the narrative of grief that people wanted to believe in, after all. Time passed, and things got better. And it was true, in some respects. Benjamin had spent an entire year feeling like he couldn’t breathe. Crushed. He rarely felt like that anymore. Existing had become easier and less painful. But he told people “ten years” as though the quantity of the years themselves meant that he didn’t still get overwhelmed, sometimes, by the vastness of his bed, or the treacherous seconds when he thought, casually, “I wonder what Nadia wants for dinner,” or the calendar dates that used to mean something to the both of them.

“I’m sorry. I wish I could have met her.”

Benjamin forced himself to continue eating, mechanically, because it was something that had to get done. He didn’t like to waste food, and the potatoes were never as good re-heated. So he ate and he drank, but he didn’t notice the flavor of anything he put into his mouth. After awhile, he was astonished to hear himself say, “I started havin’ dreams—nightmares, I s’ppose—about losin’ the ring. That’s why I don’t wear it.”

He’d never even told Seth the real reason he’d stopped wearing it, though the explanation he’d given—the one that Sawyer had first guessed—was close enough to the truth to alleviate some of the guilt he’d felt about lying. Why had he said it? Sawyer was all but a stranger to him.

But that made things easier, in a way. He’d always struggled to discuss the details of the situation and his personal feelings with his friends and neighbors. Most of them had known Nadia, which, perversely, made her difficult to talk about. The people of Sugar Blossom, doing their best to be supportive, couldn’t help but to offer something back: words of wisdom; a personal anecdote about Nadia; a philosophical perspective on grief and loss. But rarely did Benjamin ever _want_ something from people; he only wanted them to _know_. To know that Nadia had existed; to know that he was missing some vital piece of himself, like a lung.

“That’s understandable.” Sawyer’s voice was soft, and he’d dropped his eyes. The tavern was about half full, but the table closest to them was empty, and there was enough ambient noise that no one else seemed able to hear their conversation. People were talking and laughing amongst themselves over their meals, light-hearted. “Was she from Sugar Blossom?”

“Mm, no. I met Nadia when I moved out of town for awhile. She was an ecologist. Smart as a whip. She came to visit after I’d moved back, just for a few days—but she decided she didn't want to leave. I’d like to think I had somethin’ to do with it, but this place won her over before I ever did.” Sugar Blossom had been the final stop of a long trip, visiting a series of friends along the way before she was supposed to start a new job. She'd canceled all of her plans the morning after her arrival.

Sawyer dared a faint smile. “That seems to be a common feeling. Everyone seems to have really strong attachments to this town.”

“She refused to leave even after—well.” Benjamin stopped himself short and took a hasty swallow of beer through gritted teeth. “She could have gotten more advanced treatment somewhere else, but the extra time she might’ve gotten didn’t mean as much to has stayin’ here as long as possible.”

Somehow, that last gulp had emptied his glass. He looked down into it, disappointed. Sawyer made a quick little motion in the air to get Brynn’s attention, and a moment later a refill was delivered into Benjamin’s hands. Brynn looked at him for a second or two with a strange expression, but she only smiled at him wordlessly before moving on.

“This must be difficult to talk about,” Sawyer said. “Thank you for… for telling me.”

“Would’ve come up eventually, I s’ppose.”

“Even so.” Sawyer paused to chew a bite of food. He’d barely eaten, and the dish was no longer steaming. “I’ve been trying to get to know people better, but I seem to stir up a lot of bad memories. Not really what I intended.”

“Sometimes people want to talk about those things.”

“Maybe.” Sawyer looked up and met his eyes. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Benjamin admitted, honestly. “Maybe.”

He grabbed his beer, delivered all freshly cold, and drank for as long as he could manage without taking a breath, then set the glass down a little too loudly, making both Sawyer and himself jump in their seats. “But I’m sick of talkin’ about myself right now. How’s that new pickaxe treatin’ you, farmer?”

“I’ve bled on every damn rock in that mine.” Sawyer showed his palm as evidence. It was covered in pink, newly healed skin. “But it’s much easier to handle. The balance is perfect. It’s beautiful craftsmanship.”

“Told you it’d chew you up.” It didn’t seem right to say “thank you” for the compliment on his work, not when Sawyer was probably in pain because of it.

They talked about other things, but Benjamin couldn’t remember what they were, later. He could focus on the conversation as it was occurring, but when he tried to think back on any topic that had already passed, all he could think of was Nadia, sunlight shining through her hair, and the wedding ring in its locked box.

Brynn brought them new rounds of drinks twice more, and Benjamin was startled both times to find that they'd finished the old ones. His hands remained detached from his body, but he was still aware of isolated pieces of himself, suspended here and there. The beer was very cold, and it felt sharp and good against the roof of his mouth and down in the pit of his stomach. Some people left, and new people came in. He said something friendly and generic to Marian and Zachary, and Sawyer left the table for a moment to talk to Sparrow. 

Then the new people who’d come in also started to leave, and Sawyer went to the bar to pay for the night’s tab. Benjamin got up, finally recognizing that the tavern was closing and that he needed to go. Brynn asked him a question, and he gave some kind of answer. His hands continued to do things of their own accord, because they were well trained: push in his chair, push open the door, press into themselves.

He and Sawyer left together. They lived in the same direction.

When they reached the point where they’d have to turn different ways, Sawyer paused and said, “it was nice talking to you,” taking great pains to speak clearly, and Benjamin said, “yeah,” because they’d managed to stay at the tavern for hours, so he must have enjoyed the conversation—whatever it’d been about.

Then Sawyer turned away and went home, and Benjamin also turned away and went home, and when Benjamin woke up in the morning he could feel every part of himself again, and most of them hurt.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The informal title for this chapter is "I Love Infodumping, It Is My Favorite Thing."_

* * *

 

“Good morning!”  
  
Benjamin raised an arm to shield his eyes and squinted against the glare from the water. A figure was sitting at the far end of the pier, their body a black cutout against the glittering brightness of the sea. The beach was usually empty in the early morning, and Benjamin had anticipated having at least an hour to himself. Instead, he'd been hailed by an indistinct blob almost as soon as he'd set foot on the sand.  
  
“Sawyer? That you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re out early.”  
  
“What? It’s like eight o’clock already.”  
  
“’Already’? See what I’m sayin’?”  
  
“Oh, you’re one to talk.”  
  
As they’d shouted back and forth to one another, Benjamin had picked his way slowly over the sand to the pier itself, which extended out over the water past the low tide line. Sawyer was sitting at the very end, legs dangling over the edge. There was a bucket beside him, as well as a big glass jug beaded with condensation. His rucksack was slumped against his leg, and he was holding a fishing rod. The fishing line shone in the light like a strand of spider silk.  
  
“Catching dinner?” Benjamin asked. The pier creaked as he stepped onto it. It was old, and once or twice a year he put some thought into rebuilding it.  
  
“Oh, I don’t eat meat. But Alexander really likes tuna. I’m trying to bribe him for secret reasons. And I accidentally adopted a cat who’s kind of a picky eater.”  
  
“Bribe…?”  
  
“Secret reasons,” Sawyer repeated.  
  
“I see,” Benjamin said, though he didn’t. He felt strange about standing over Sawyer, so he, too, lowered himself to sit on the pier’s edge. Should he have asked first? He glanced at Sawyer from the corner of his eye, but he didn’t look bothered. “How do you accidentally adopt a cat?”  
  
“Oh, did you ever see that stray cat that hung out around that big tree, up by the road? A white cat?”  
  
“Yeah. Real skittish. Marian tried to trap her about a year ago to her vaccinated, but she never fell for it.”  
  
“I thought she belonged to someone, but I didn’t get any answers when I asked around. Anyway, I've been doing some fishing to earn a bit of money, and I left some of the smaller ones out for her. In places where she might be able to find them, you know. And then a couple weeks ago she showed up outside of my house one day, and just kind of… walked in. And, uh, I think she’s my cat now?”  
  
Even the stray animals had taken a shine to him. Unbelievable. “Well, glad she’s bein’ taken care of.”  
  
Sawyer swung one of his legs back and forth and studied Benjamin with his head cocked. “Not out here to fish?”  
  
“Just wanted somewhere to think.”  
  
Sawyer made a soft little _hmm_ sound and looked out over the water, a glittering and unfathomable mass that stretched into the distance until it was swallowed by the earth’s own immense curvature. “Seems like a good place for it,” he said. “Do you mind me being here?”  
  
“Well, you were here first.”  
  
They hadn’t really spoken since their conversation at the Midnight Tavern, after which Benjamin’s hangover had given way to a vague feeling of apprehension that’d dogged him ever since. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember what they’d talked about—or, rather, the things that had followed after Nadia. Not knowing the subjects they’d covered or the mood on which the conversation had ended, Benjamin had almost dreaded their next meeting.  What if Sawyer had revealed something personal—a detail about his family or his past—only to have it become clear that Benjamin didn’t remember? He’d have every right to feel offended. But so far, at least, everything seemed normal. Sawyer had greeted him without any hesitation, and there was nothing guarded about his tone or body language.  
  
Unable to think clearly, Benjamin distracted himself by studying the glass jug sitting between them, instead. It held maybe a half-gallon of liquid, and the glass itself was brown and nearly opaque. There was a battered little tin cup tied to its handle by a piece of twine. “What’ve you got here?”  
  
“Oh. Well, you got me hooked on that Northern beer you like. I went back the next day, and Brynn filled a keg for me. Wasn't sure how long I'd be out here, so I brought some along.”  
  
Benjamin couldn't entirely stop himself from frowning. “Pretty early to be drinkin’.”  
  
Sawyer winced and shrugged one shoulder at the same time, a gesture simultaneously abashed and nonchalant. “I know, I know. It seems bad. It’s just because I have a hard time sitting still. I get restless if I’m not moving or working on something, you know? I can’t move my hands very much while I’m fishing, so I start going out of my mind a little bit. It helps me relax so that I can tolerate just sitting around while I wait for a bite.” He gave the fishing rod a meaningful shake, causing the line to ripple in a long gleaming arc before it went still again. “Want some?”  
  
Benjamin didn’t approve of mixing work with alcohol, but, well, Sawyer wasn’t really working, and neither was he. Refusing the offer implied a negative judgment, so Benjamin said, “Okay.”  
  
“I only have one cup, sorry.”  
  
Benjamin pulled the jug’s stopper and poured half a cup for himself. The smell hit him right away, a familiar, rich bitterness. But mingled with the salt air, he could smell things he’d never noticed before: something herbaceous and spicy, like birch wood, and a warm earthiness. Benjamin suddenly understood that this was the way the beer was meant to be drunk: outside, by the sea, where everything had a natural _kick_ to it. The beer was a little warmer than it was usually served at the Midnight, but that brought out the flavor even more. It was like trying something completely new for the first time.  
  
He’d added only two or three mouthfuls to the cup, and when he had finished with them, he found that he still wanted more. Too embarrassed to actually ask for permission, he wordlessly poured himself another cup, this one much fuller the first. Sawyer didn’t say anything as he continued to gaze out over the water, but Benjamin saw one corner of his mouth inch upward.  
  
They were quiet for awhile, each of them looking at the water and occupied with their own thoughts, and then Sawyer coughed and said, “I ended up talking to Hunter for awhile the other day. He said that his mom is your sister? Are you two close in age?”  
  
“Twins, actually. Did Hunter tell you much about her?”  
  
“No; it just came up in passing. Touchy subject?”  
  
“Not really. Complicated, I guess. But they keep in touch as much as they can.”  
  
Sawyer motioned for the cup Benjamin was still holding, and Benjamin gave it back. Sawyer wedged the fishing rod between his elbow and his ribs so he could lift the jug and pour himself a drink. Condensation from the jug came away on his hand, and he rubbed it against his thigh.  
  
“You make it sound like there’s a reason they can’t keep in touch all the time,” he observed.  
  
“Katherine has a military career. She studied history and sociology and things like that. She’s sort of an, mm, social consultant? Gives advice during abroad missions about how to interact with the local culture so that they don’t fuck up things any worse than usual. A lot of it’s classified. I don’t know many details.”  
  
“Shit. That’s gotta be a rough job.”  
  
Katherine was tough as nails, and she’d never complained about anything in her life, but she looked tired every time Benjamin had seen her for the last—what, fifteen, twenty years? Benjamin respected her commitment, but Sawyer was right: it _was_ rough, and some deep, unvoiced part of himself wished that she’d quit and give herself a break. But it seemed traitorous to say so, and he'd never shared that opinion with her or anyone else.  
  
“The travel put a strain on her marriage, so she raised Hunter mostly on her own. But it wasn’t real good for him. Couldn’t keep long-term friends. Didn’t get to have much freedom. So after, ah, after Nadia passed, Katherine had the idea that Hunter should move here. They’d visited several times, and Hunter always liked it. You know, all the space and the animals and everythin’. She just wanted what was best for him.”  
  
Sawyer stared over at him, brow furrowed. He refilled the tin cup and handed it back to to Benjamin without a word. This time Benjamin simply tossed it down, savoring nothing about the taste.  
  
"I was angry about the idea at first. I was barely takin’ care of myself. How was I supposed to do anythin’ to help Hunter? But it was… a good thing. He kept me from—from sinkin’ down too far to come back up again.”  
  
“Hunter really respects you,” Sawyer murmured. “He seems happy here. You’ve done a good job taking care of him.”  
  
Benjamin scrubbed roughly at his face with the hand that wasn’t holding the little cup. Why did he keep saying things like this? “Thought I told you the other day not to let me do all the talkin’, farmer,” he said, gruffly.  
  
“Well, not in those exact words.” But there was a look of understanding in Sawyer's face, all the same: they’d edged too close to a conversational topic that’d already overwhelmed Benjamin once before. “Fuck, well, okay, gimme a prompt or something. I’m not good at being put on the spot.”  
  
Shit. What if he asked something they’d already talked about at the bar? Well, nothing to be done about it. “Okay. Siblings?”  
  
“Only child. But I had a pet turtle? Well, tortoise. She lives with my parents now. My mom does sound editing for commercials and my dad is a nurse. Pretty normal stuff. I, uh—what else?”  
  
“How’d you end up here? Farmin’? It ain’t an easy life, and Sugar Blossom doesn’t show up on too many maps.”  
  
“Damn, where I start with that? It’s not that complicated, but— Here, give me that cup back.” This time Benjamin filled the tin cup on Sawyer’s behalf so he wouldn’t have to fumble with the fishing rod. “Thanks. Well, uh, I have dyslexia, so…”  
  
“Like you can’t read?”  
  
“No, I can read,” Sawyer laughed, unoffended. “But it takes awhile. By the time anyone figured out that I had dyslexia and wasn’t just lazy or stupid—I mean, my parents didn’t think that, just some teachers and other people—I’d kind of lost interest in the idea of trying to impress people or, like, inspirationally overcoming my disability. I liked learning things, but I was never going to be _good_ at school, you know? So the whole traditional path of school to college to an upwardly mobile career with a retirement plan didn’t really appeal to me. I like working with my hands, so I ended up doing all these odd jobs. Rough manual labor type things. Like, commercial crabbing boat, road work, things like that. I made pretty good money, but I also got injured a lot. That’s just what happens. I knew that if I kept it up, I’d end up breaking my neck sooner or later. But what else was I gonna do? I didn’t have enough formal education for much else. Well, while I was drifting around and doing odd jobs, I ran into this guy who told me all about his hometown and a farm that was for sale, and that guy was Paxel. I thought, honestly, how hard can farming be? The land was selling for cheap, so I had enough savings to buy it clean, and here I am.”  
  
Benjamin realized that his eyebrows had nearly reached his hairline, and he forced them back into a more neutral position. Paxel was a good judge of character, but Benjamin could not imagine entrusting the Hayseeds’ estate to a drifter who didn’t know the first thing about farming. “I hope Paxel didn’t try to make you think it’d be easy work.”  
  
“Ha! No, no. But I, uh, still under-estimated how hard farming would be. It’s, uh… it’s pretty fucking hard. But I like it. It feels good. Satisfying, I guess.”  
  
“Mm. Takes a lot of patience.”  
  
Sawyer tipped his head back and laughed outright. “You’re a real sonuvabitch, you know that?”  
  
“What?” Benjamin demanded, bristling.  
  
“Yeah.” Sawyer was smiling the same as ever, no hint of meanness in his face. His leg continued to swing back and forth, relaxed and content. “You’re way too easy to read. Every time I talk about my life, you’ve sat there thinking _what in the world is this idiot doing_?”  
  
“I have not,” Benjamin said, unconvincingly.    
  
“Ha—whatever. Well, I don’t mind. It's part of why I like talking to you.”  
  
Sawyer might as well have sucker punched him for all Benjamin was prepared for _that_. His face heated with a combination of confusion and annoyance.  
  
“Well,” Sawyer continued, blithely, “you got any other questions? I’m happy to entertain.”  
  
There had to be something innocuous they could talk about, something that wouldn’t give Benjamin any cause for judgment. He thought about it for a second, and then said, as casually as he could manage, “So where’d that dog of yours come from?”  
  
Benjamin had seen it following Sawyer a few times, a wiry little thing with one folded-over ear.  
  
“I found Mademoiselle in a town where I was working at a cannery. She was about half grown and was surviving on fish guts and whatever else was getting thrown out. I hung out with her during lunch breaks, and she’d show up to walk me to and from work. When it was time to move on, I figured she couldn’t do any worse with me than she would staying around that place. So I got her a collar, and the rest is history.”  
  
“A cannery, huh? Messy work. That why you don’t eat meat?”  
  
Sawyer groaned and reached for the cup, which he’d passed back to Benjamin just a moment earlier. “I need another drink before I tell that one.”  
  
He knocked back the entire cup as soon as Benjamin filled it for him, then shoved the cup right back into Benjamin’s hands as though to spare himself from further temptation.  
  
“Okay, so, I went backpacking around by myself for awhile after I was out of school. Miraculously, I didn’t get murdered or anything. One night I fell asleep on this little hill out in the middle of nowhere, and when I woke up in the morning I realized I was in the middle of a pasture, and there were all these cows around. I was totally surrounded. I was worried they might, I don’t know, trample me or something—I didn’t really understand how cows worked—so I tried to just lie really still until they went away, but they just snuffled around and nosed at me a little, and they didn't seem to be in a big hurry. It was really early in the morning, and the sun was just coming up, and everything was quiet and dew covered. After awhile I figured, fuck it, and I sat up and tried to pet one. It had a calf that was right at face level with me, and it had these dark doe eyes with these big, intense eyelashes, and it gave me a little headbutt right on the face, like a cat. And I started thinking about how I’d eaten cows before, and suddenly I got really emotional about it. I went right over the edge, just like that. So there I was, all by myself on this hilltop, crying and petting all of these fucking adorable cows. I haven’t really wanted to eat meat since then.”  
  
After a minute Benjamin said, “Wow.”  
  
Sawyer chuckled, sounding self-conscious, and ducked his head. “Yeah, that’s the reaction I usually get. Well, I think my weird stories are scaring the fish away. Haven’t even felt a nibble.”  
  
“Try pourin’ them some beer so they lower their guard.”  
  
Sawyer laughed, and for awhile they did nothing but pass the cup back and forth while Sawyer adjusted the fishing line. The glass jug grew lighter with each exchange. The day was warming up, and the angle of the light had changed. The reflection of the sun on the water began to hurt Benjamin’s eyes—I’ve spent too much time inside lately, he thought—so he laid backwards on the pier and put his forearm over his eyes to give them a rest. He listened to the gulls, and the water, and the faint sounds of Sawyer shifting around so his legs wouldn’t fall asleep.  
  
And then, suddenly, the light was much dimmer, and he couldn’t feel the sun hitting him with the same intensity. Benjamin opened his eyes—his arm had fallen aside—and blinked groggily and uncomprehendingly at something stretched out above him. He couldn’t understand what it was, so he reached up and touched it. Soft and thin, with a bit of give.  
  
“What…?”  
  
His voice came out in a rasp, and his mouth was gummy and stale-tasting.  
  
“Oh, you’re awake?” came Sawyer’s voice from… somewhere.  
  
Benjamin turned his head to the side. Between the surface of the pier and the thing above him, he could see a horizontal stripe of water and sand. And there were sticks wedged vertically between the boards of the pier, two on either side of him. It was a shirt, Benjamin realized all at once. Someone—someone? _Sawyer_ —had tied the corners of a shirt to bits of driftwood, which he’d wedged between the planks to form a little canopy above him.  
  
Benjamin yanked one of the driftwood sticks out of the pier and sat up, collapsing the makeshift tent in the process. Sawyer was still sitting at the edge of the pier, but now he was shirtless. He smiled back over his shoulder.  
  
“Did I,” Benjamin started, but he broke off coughing before he could get far. Sawyer reached for something tucked out of sight and handed Benjamin an uncapped metal flask. Benjamin drank without hesitation. The water was warm, but damn did it taste good.  
  
“You let me fall asleep?” he finally managed to get out. He could hardly believe it, but sure enough, the sun had ticked to a new section of the sky. It looked like about two hours had passed. He was very warm, and his eyes felt dry.  
  
“You seemed like you needed it. I didn’t want you to get sunburned, though.”  
  
Benjamin realized that he was still holding Sawyer’s wadded up shirt. He hastened to untie the pieces of driftwood so he could throw it back.  
  
“What abut you, then?” he demanded.  
  
“Just trying to even out my farmer’s tan.” Sawyer slapped at his own chest good-naturedly. His torso was, indeed, less brown than his arms, though he was still several shades darker than Benjamin. Sawyer didn’t look like he burned easily. He draped his returned shirt loosely across his shoulders instead of putting it on. “You missed all the excitement while you were out, though. Guess _you_ were the one scaring them away.”  
  
Benjamin looked where Sawyer was pointing and saw two plump, glistening fish in the bucket that had been empty when he’d arrived. They were nice looking fish. He blinked at them. “The hell.”  
  
“Now that you’re awake again I probably won’t have any more luck,” Sawyer said, regretfully. “Are you sure you couldn’t use another nap?”  
  
“Oh, shut yer mouth.”  
  
Sawyer smirked and reached for something else sitting on the opposite side of him. When he turned around again, he presented Benjamin with a big conch shell, all hazy pink on the inside. “Look what I found when I got up to find some branches. Do you want it?”  
  
“What?” Benjamin asked, even as he held out his hands to accept the shell. He found seashells interesting: little self-made homes, sturdy but elegant. “Is this usually how you make friends? Give them things you find on the ground, like a kid?”  
  
Sawyer just smiled back at him, seeing right through Benjamin’s front. “Is it working?” Suddenly he rocked forward.  
  
The fishing line had given a tremendous lurch, almost jerking the rod right out of Sawyer’s hands. He floundered to get a better grip, and his shirt fell backwards off his shoulders. “What the shit?”  
  
“You got a bite,” Benjamin observed mildly.  
  
Sawyer got onto his feet as he began reeling in the line, while Benjamin, curious, set aside the conch shell and crawled forward to look into the water. Whatever Sawyer had hooked was still too far under for Benjamin to see, but it was resisting Sawyer with everything it had. Following the pull of the line, Sawyer paced partway down the pier, then back again, then to the other side, and so on. He stepped over or around Benjamin several times as his catch fought its way back and forth. At last Sawyer, who’d allowed himself to be pulled to and fro without bothering to crank the wheel, began to reel in the line in earnest. He planted himself firmly in one spot, and there was a bright intensity to his face he started to win ground.  
  
Benjamin, still at the edge of the pier, was the first to actually see the fish. It broke the water in a lunging heave, thrashing, before it disappeared beneath the surface again. “Goddamn,” Benjamin breathed. It was a damn big fish. And Sawyer was actually going to land it, with that second-rate fishing rod he'd picked up who-knows-where.  
  
By now the fish didn’t have much space to work with. Sawyer was still eating up the slack on the line, and the water churned as the fish struggled just beneath the surface. Its dorsal fin appeared and vanished again and again, stirring up froth on the water.  
  
Then the fishing rod stopped whirring and Sawyer said, “Oh, fuck me! I’ve got a jam. Okay, hold on, hold on…”  
  
Benjamin eyed the water and said, “Just back up a few steps.”  
  
Sawyer said, “what?” but did what he was told, anyway.  
  
Benjamin, being a creature of habit, kept a pair of leather work gloves tucked into his belt even on his days off, and now he slipped them on and carefully eased himself down onto his stomach so that his shoulders, head, and arms jutted out over the edge of the pier. Then he grabbed the fishing line and pulled it tight across one of his gloved hands. The fish leaped again, and Benjamin winced as the line dug in. But it was bearable. “I’m going to feed you the slack,” he said over his shoulder. “Wrap your shirt around your arm and loop the line around it.”  
  
He heard Sawyer scramble a bit. “Got it!”  
  
The span of line he’d pulled up went tight as Sawyer pulled at it from his end. So Benjamin reached down again and hauled up another arm’s length of the line, bracing the weight over his glove while Sawyer wound the new slack around his arm. The fish's head emerged, gaping, and then fish it emerged fully with its tail slapping back and forth.  
  
When it’s head had been brought to the level of the pier, Benjamin stood up to gain the last bit of height needed to land the fish, and Sawyer made a soft noise of astonishment. The fish was longer than his torso, gleaming and fat. It was not going to fit in the bucket.  
  
It was damn heavy, in any case. Benjamin braced his other forearm against its belly and let its weight fall lengthwise across both of his arms. “Can you get the hook?” he grunted.  
  
But no sooner had he spoken than the fish whipped its body in one huge, powerful motion: a final act of desperation. With startling clarity, Benjamin saw the hook fly from the fish’s mouth and soar through the air, glinting. The fish hit Benjamin. Benjamin hit Sawyer. All of them hit the pier.  
  
The fish flopped dramatically once, twice, and then there was a slight pause before he heard a dull _splush_.  
  
Benjamin coughed, winded.  
  
Then he realized that Sawyer’s legs were digging into his back, and he scrambled around onto his hands and knees. Sawyer was propped up on his elbows, and the lower half of his face was covered in blood. It was dripping onto his chest, too.  
  
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Sawyer whispered. “No one is _ever_ going to believe this story.” A huge grin split through the terrible redness coating his face.  
  
“Are you hurt?”  
  
A stupid question. Benjamin rose fully onto his knees and struggled to extract a handkerchief from his pocket.  
  
“Yeah, it’s just my nose. Is your head alright?”  
  
“It’s fine,” Benjamin said. But as soon as he’d spoken, he realized that there was indeed a dull ache radiating from the back of his head. He’d smashed it directly into Sawyer’s face but hadn’t _felt_ anything until Sawyer mentioned it. He thrust the handkerchief toward Sawyer. “Here!”  
  
Sawyer eyed it reluctantly. “I’ll get it all dirty. It’s really hard to wash out blood,” he pointed out. Benjamin growled, grabbed Sawyer by the shoulder, and began to dab at his nose. Sawyer yelped and grappled with Benjamin’s arms. The fishing line, still wrapped around Sawyer’s arm, brought the fishing rod skittering over to bump into them.  
  
“Okay! Okay, okay!” Sawyer surrendered to the situation and blotted the handkerchief up against his nose.  
  
“I’ll take the fish you already caught and the beer jug back to your farm so you can go straight to the clinic. Should I take your rucksack, too? Need anything from it?”  
  
“What? Why? I don’t need to go to the clinic.” With his nose pinched to staunch the flow of blood, Sawyer sounded distant and muffled.  
  
“What if your nose is broken?”  
  
“That’s not fatal.”  
  
“ _That’s not_ —” Benjamin drew in a deep breath to steady himself. “Get on your damn feet, farmer! I’ll walk you there, myself, if you’re gonna be stupid about it!”  
  
Sawyer bolted onto his feet, and the fishing rod flew up with him and bounced against his leg. He began to laugh, and Benjamin, feeling unhinged, also started to laugh, and they struggled to keep themselves under control as they untangled Sawyer from the fishing line and staggered off toward the clinic, bloody and hysterical and with two fish to show for all their troubles.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _[Even though a lot of villagers don’t actually appear in-game at the Firelight Festival, I’ve assumed that nearly everyone would in fact attend, even if not in a specifically romantic context._
> 
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> 
> _I’d hoped that the time between updates would actually be shorter after this chapter—but it turns out that I’ll be moving this month, and my work situation also became Very Bad. So I’ll just have to do my best to coordinate around those things.]_

Treating Sawyer’s broken nose took less than half an hour, but he was not freed from Liam and Madison’s care until the late afternoon. The clinic saw few serious injuries, so its resident doctor and nurse went above and beyond the call of duty for every patient who crossed their threshold. Not content with merely fixing Sawyer’s nose, they subjected him to a full physical exam, put in a request for his medical history records, drew for blood-work, and lectured him about nutrition, hydration, and safety practices while working. Benjamin fared slightly better. He’d had a recent check-up, but Liam insisted on monitoring him for a possible concussion, so he spent the afternoon sitting around and sipping orange juice and exchanging mutually sympathetic glances with Sawyer whenever they happened to see one another. When they were finally released, Sawyer jovially offered to catch Liam and Madison some fresh fish to repay them for their kindness.  
  
Madison and Liam never discussed patient care with anyone else, and Benjamin didn’t breathe a word about the fiasco to anyone but Hunter, but the story quickly percolated through the whole town. With a plaster bandage across his nose, Sawyer stuck out a like a sore thumb, and, naturally, everyone wanted to know what happened—which meant, in turn, that everyone also wanted to hear _Benjamin’s_ version of the story. He wasn’t known for exaggeration or flights of imagination, so his eye witness account was used to validate Sawyer’s version of events. Everywhere he went, he found himself saying things like “yes, it actually was that big” and “I didn’t really _headbutt_ him, technically speakin’” and “I don’t know, I was asleep.”  
  
Bizarrely, the fish incident seemed to have solidified the reality of their friendship in Sawyer’s mind. He began to stop into the craft shop instead of just passing, and he often brought things to share. One day it was a bushel of carefully washed potatoes and a few oranges; another day it was a pair of fresh-caught fish, all neatly gutted and cleaned; and another it was a dog-eared old novel. He’d been given the book, he explained, with the expectation that it should be given as a gift to someone else. He wasn’t sure whether it was any good, but it was about a family of carpenters, so perhaps Benjamin might enjoy it?  
  
Benjamin read it over the course of a few evenings, sitting outside with bottles of beer to keep him company.  
  
He crafted something in return—a little wooden horse that could trundle along on a set of stout wheels, nothing that Sawyer himself would possibly have any use for—and handed it over the next time Sawyer came to the shop. Sawyer was delighted, and not long after that Benjamin saw Violet’s son, Bloom, racing the horse outside the general store while his mother did her shopping.  
  
The weather turned properly hot, and summer was nearing its halfway point when Hunter cleared his throat one morning over breakfast and said, “I was thinkin’ I might invite Annabelle to the Firelight Festival.”  
  
Benjamin made a clumsy motion with his spoon, and juice erupted from the the halved grapefruit he was cutting into and splashed halfway across the table. He pretended no such thing had happened as he scooped up the segment of grapefruit and said, casually, “I didn’t know you two were close.”  
  
“Well, we weren’t. Until recently, I mean.” Hunter scraped the tines of his fork through a little drop of grease, drawing long tendrils of oil across his plate. “You remember the night of the music festival? Actually, I didn’t go to the Midnight Tavern. I ran into Annabelle on the way back. I stopped for just a second to say ‘hello,’ but it was kind of nice out, so we just kept walkin’ around together and talkin’ about things until she had to go home.”  
  
“Hm,” Benjamin said when Hunter paused, because it seemed that some kind of reaction was expected, but he didn’t want to risk saying the _wrong_ thing and discouraging Hunter from continuing.  
  
“I always ask her how she’s doin’ when I see her, and stuff like that,” Hunter went on. He was still looking at his plate. “It just felt different that time, somehow. She mentioned some things about her dad, and I’ve, um, been thinkin’ about my mom lately. I mean—I think about her a lot of the time, anyway, but, just…”  
  
Hunter trailed off. He tapped his fork against his plate, tic tic tic, and Benjamin could tell that he was jogging one of his legs in place. “I know it sounds really cheesy, but it just seemed like we really understood one another all of a sudden. Like, that’s never happened before with anyone. And I felt really excited afterward for some reason. I couldn’t wait to talk to her again.”  
  
“Hm,” Benjamin said again.  
  
“She’s really nice. She likes to hang out at a spot near here to read, so I’ve been goin’ over to talk to her sometimes. I don’t think she minds? So, basically, I was wonderin’ if you have any advice?”  
  
“Er,” Benjamin said. “Advice?”  
  
“Yeah, advice about how to ask someone out or, um, tell them that you like them,” Hunter pressed. His face fluctuated between varying shades of pink and red, but he was doing an admirable job at forging ahead with the conversation. “You got married. What did you do? How did you ask Aunt Nadia out?”  
  
Benjamin started to panic a bit. He’d been spared from a lot of difficult teenage conversations: his sister had mercifully introduced Hunter to a full spectrum of challenging topics before he’d come under Benjamin’s guardianship. Katherine had believed that important subjects needed to be broached as soon as possible and that children were surprisingly capable of understanding mature concepts, and she hadn’t been wrong. Hunter was remarkably practical and unperturbed about most things thats parents dreaded their teenagers encountering. But while he was friendly and outgoing, he’d shown almost no romantic inclinations. It was a family trait, Benjamin had assumed.  
  
But now Benjamin had been blindsided. He’d been able to avoid even the tamest of “adult” conversations for so long that he’d been lulled into thinking that they’d never come up at all, and he was quite unprepared for the situation at hand.  
  
Hunter’s leg finally stopped bouncing, and Benjamin realized that he’d been silent for a full thirty stifling seconds. He cleared his throat. “Nadia was the one who asked, actually.”  
  
He felt satisfied with this answer—not because it was _good_ or _helpful_ , but because it demonstrated, through indirect admittance, that he had no idea what he was talking about and that Hunter should not attempt to ask him for practical advice.  
  
But Hunter simply took this in stride. He folded his arms and regarded Benjamin thoughtfully. “Okay, well, how did _she_ ask _you_ , then?”  
  
Benjamin’s entire body went warm. “Ah, she, um, she just asked if I wanted to study. Together. With her.”  
  
What had actually happened was that they’d been outside on a hike, resting in a little sun-speckled grove, and Nadia had said, “This is really nice. Do you want to screw?”  
  
Benjamin would not repeat that to anyone.  
  
Unfortunately, the lie had not satisfied Hunter. He frowned, and his leg started bouncing up and down again. “So, then… how did you know it was a _date_? _Was_ it actually a date? I don’t want to be, like, ambiguous.”  
  
In many ways, his nephew was too smart for his own good—and definitely too smart for Benjamin’s good.  
  
“What other people have done doesn’t matter,” Benjamin said briskly. “All you have to do is tell Annabelle that you’d like to go to the festival with her. Keep it simple. Askin’ her to the festival won’t be ambiguous. If you’ve gotta say anythin’ else, just tell her that you like spendin’ time together, and why. You can talk more about your feelin’s when you’re at the festival, if you need to.”  
  
“Okay… But what if she _doesn’t_ want to go to the festival?”  
  
“Only so much advice I can give in one mornin’. No point in thinkin’ about that now. If she says ‘no,’ then tell her that you hope she enjoys the festival, and we can figure out the rest of it later.”  
  
Hunter digested this for a moment, studying a few crumbs scattered on the tabletop between them. But when he eventually looked up, he was smiling. “Okay. Thanks for the advice, Uncle Benjamin.”  
  
“Well, if only I could give you some advice on how to finish up that chair that’s been sittin’ around half done for days.”  
  
Hunter winced a little and gave a small, guilty chuckle. “It’s almost done, I swear. But, um, could I ask one more favor?”  
  
“Mm? What’s that?”  
  
“Um, could you come to the festival, too? I’d feel a lot better if you were there, in case things don’t go well. I just don’t want to have to leave by myself, you know?”  
  
“Alright,” Benjamin said. There was nothing else he _could_ say. It didn’t matter how much he didn’t want to go to the festival: he’d sooner pull out a tooth than let Hunter down. “But you’ve gotta do the dishes for two weeks.”  
  
Hunter grinned and put out a hand, and they shook on it over top of breakfast.

 

* * *

  
The actual day of the festival was easily the hottest of the year, though as afternoon settled into evening it brought a cooler breeze that stifled the worst of the heat. Benjamin had gambled on the theory that arriving late was actually the best way to avoid drawing attention to himself, as everyone was likely to be absorbed with their lanterns once the festival got underway, and it seemed he’d made the right call. Aside from a few raised heads from the people working nearest to the plaza entry, no one paid him any mind as he slipped onto the closest bench and slouched down. Attendance was much better than the last time Benjamin had come, back when Hunter still needed a chaperon to look after him. But there were a few missing faces, even so: no Liam (unsurprising); no Senah (also unsurprising); no Sawyer (unusual).  
  
He spotted Hunter and Annabelle at a distance, down at the far end of the plaza. Against Benjamin’s advice, Hunter had put off asking Annabelle to the festival until the very day before, whereupon he’d burst into the shop, as red-faced and out of breath as though he’d sprinted home straight from a lockball match, and announced, all in one rush, “Annabelle said she’d go to the festival with me, can I have the day off, what should I wear?” But now they were sitting close together, their heads bowed toward one another. They shied skittishly apart every time their hands or faces came too close, but they seemed to be having a good time, nonetheless. They were working together on one lantern, but there were already two or three others sitting beside them. Benjamin could not hear a word of their conversation, but Hunter’s face looked relaxed and happy, and their shoulders occasionally shook with laughter as they worked. Seeing the expression on his nephew’s face made something unclench in Benjamin’s chest.  
  
Amongst the other couples and groups, another pair also caught Benjamin’s eye. Brynn and Hailey were sitting near the center of the plaza, their knees on the verge of touching, and a thermos of questionable character resting between them. Benjamin’s suspicions were confirmed by the chronological progression of their lanterns. They’d already constructed eight or so, which were laid out in approximate order of completion. The first couple were perfectly normal looking, but as alcohol had taken effect, each one had deteriorated in quality. Now the girls were clearly struggling to perform even the simplest of steps, and their latest lantern was a dilapidated wreck.  
  
The Firelight Festival didn’t seem like an appropriate place for public drunkenness. But their families were there to supervise, and there wasn’t much trouble they could get into at such a public event.  
  
He didn’t want to spoil his mood by letting himself get caught up in judgment, so Benjamin thumbed open the book he’d brought along. He hadn’t done much reading since Fable had closed the library and left town, but Sawyer’s present had reminded him how much he’d missed it. Unfortunately, the library’s closure also meant that he’d long since run out of fresh reading material, but the thought of sitting around in the plaza without being able to do anything had made him itch. He’d discovered an old novel in the attic the previous afternoon, something nautical-themed he’d read years ago but couldn’t recall in any way. It would have to do.  
  
He’d been reading for some time when a familiar voice said, “How’s the book?” Benjamin’s head jerked up to find Sawyer standing in front of the bench, holding a loose assortment of lantern materials. The plaster bandage was long since gone, but there was a new crimp along the bridge of his nose, like the pinched edge of a pie crust. A patch of sweat had soaked through his shirt over the center of his chest.  
  
“Hey, my eyes are up here,” Sawyer said with a little flicking motion toward his face.  
  
Benjamin jolted and said, “What?”  
  
“Um, that was a joke about—uh, you know, nevermind. I’m surprised to see you here, actually!”  
  
“I was surprised to see you not here. Didn’t seem right for the _Shepherd_ not to attend—or to be late.”  
  
“Yeah, well, it turns out that cows don’t really care whether ‘the Shepherd’ has a schedule to keep.”  
  
“Ha. Well, don’t let me keep you from your date.”  
  
“My what?” Sawyer made a show of looking around himself, as though checking whether someone had snuck up on him. “Am I on a date and no one told me? Help me out and tell me who it is. Are they cute?”  
  
“Just figured you might’ve invited someone,” Benjamin said blandly.  
  
Sawyer cocked an eyebrow and grinned, half of his teeth flashing into view. “Oh, yeah? Who’d you have your money on?”  
  
“I don’t know—Senah?”  
  
“Ha! No way would she let me put her through something like this more than once. Nah, it’s just me.”  
  
“Well, nothin’ wrong with that.”  
  
“Hopefully not.” Without any invitation, Sawyer sat down on the bench and stretched his legs out. “Actually, I was hoping I could ask for a favor? I have… no idea at all how to make one of these lanterns.” He gave his armful of paper and other materials a helpless shake.  
  
Benjamin gave him a hard, skeptical look. “You’re gonna give folks the wrong idea, farmer.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
“What do you mean, _why_?” he snapped. “It’s a romantic festival.”  
  
“This town takes romance so seriously,” Sawyer laughed. “I _know_ it’s a romantic festival, but, I mean, everyone in town is still invited, right? Not _everyone_ is here on a date.”  
  
“So ask one of them, then. Logan’s right over there.” Benjamin pointed, helpfully.  
  
Sawyer scrunched his mouth over to the side with an expression of such patent disbelief that Benjamin came perilously close to losing his resolve and laughing. “I already saw Logan gluing his fingers to a lantern. But you always know what you’re doing. I trust you.”  
  
To Benjamin’s absolute horror, he felt himself flush. “I’m already busy,” he said, thumping the cover of his book.  
  
Some of brightness faded out of Sawyer’s face. He rocked back up onto his feet and backed a step away from the bench. “Oh, right, no problem. Sorry for interrupting. I’ll talk to you later.”  
  
Benjamin turned his attention back to his book, resolutely refusing to watch Sawyer walk away. But a few minutes later, he hadn’t managed to do more than re-read the same paragraph over and over without absorbing any part of it. His mind stuttered over every sentence, filling the spaces between words with questions. Had he been too unkind? Sawyer rarely asked for favors, and he was never pushy. Benjamin had turned down such a simple request. Should he find him and apologize? When? Now? No, not during the festival. He could visit Sawyer’s farm the next day. But perhaps that would be excessive. Going directly to someone’s house without warning or invitation was disruptive, and he didn’t want to force Sawyer to be an unwilling host. Perhaps he could write a letter? No—  
  
Benjamin frowned at his book and turned the page, and then had to turn it back again. What’d just happened? He stared intently at the final paragraph. _The ship listed heavily as a wave struck it full broadside… The ship listed… The ship listed…_  
  
He sighed and snapped the book shut. But now there was movement in the plaza: people were standing up and beginning to migrate toward the water, carrying their lanterns. He found himself distracted by Brynn and Hailey once again. Hailey kept trying to stand up, her knees wobbling, and only got half way there before she sank back onto the ground. This happened three more times until Brynn came to her rescue. She pulled Hailey up by one hand, and they leaned against one another for support, giggling helplessly. Benjamin watched as they tried—and failed—to pick up their excessive collection of haphazard lanterns until Hailey at last tottered off, still a bit quivery, to fetch Bloom. They offloaded two of their most respectable-looking lanterns onto him, and Bloom’s face lit up like a lantern, himself.  
  
Benjamin got up. He tucked the book under his arm. Hunter and Annabelle had already been close to the water, and now they were blocked from sight. But things appeared to be going well the last time he’d seen them. It’d be alright if he left early. Hunter was a good kid; lack of experience aside, Benjamin couldn’t imagine that he’d do anything to warrant being abandoned on a date.  
  
He turned away toward the plaza’s entrance but hadn’t gotten more than a few steps before he heard his name called.  
  
Benjamin tensed but turned around all the same. Sawyer had already caught up to him.  
  
“Here,” he said, reaching out and placing a lantern directly into Benjamin’s hands. “This is something to say ‘sorry’ for making you uncomfortable. I only had the time to make two, but I think this one’s nicer.”  
  
“I—uh—” Benjamin cleared his throat. “Thank you, but you… you ought to keep this. Wouldn’t be right of me to take something that you made on your own.”  
  
“What? Come on, did you really come here just to watch everyone _else_ participate?”  
  
Benjamin shifted the lantern around, rotating it in a slow circle between his hands. He felt like he’d stumbled into a trap. The lantern kept him from leaving—it just didn’t seem right to take it away—but neither could he give it back, not when it’d been given as an offering of reconciliation. “This isn’t… This isn’t for me. Any of this. I don’t belong here.”  
  
Sawyer straightened his back and gave Benjamin a look of outright defiance. “I haven’t been in this town for that long, but even I know that’s bullshit. I understood the story about the lanterns well enough to know that this whole event is—it’s about celebrating community, and doing something to help someone. So, yeah, this _is_ for you. Come on and be part of it.”  
  
What do you know? he wanted to ask. What makes you think that story makes any difference to me? But he couldn’t say anything, because his throat had gone tight and aching. He found himself walking toward the water, and Sawyer followed.  
  
A few long-stemmed matches were being passed hand-to-hand so that everyone could light the small candles within each lantern. Everyone had to shift around one another so they could reach the water, and Benjamin and Sawyer became separated, pushed to different sides of the crowd. Benjamin lit his lantern from a match handed to him by Demetri. He reached the land’s edge and stared at the tiny, wavering glow as he dipped his hands into the water and let the lantern float free.  
  
The lantern bobbled dangerously but stayed upright as it drifted slowly away to join the tiny fleet spreading out through the harbor. Benjamin stepped backwards to make room for others to access the water, but he kept his eyes fixed on that one point of light, his small contribution to the collective glow illuminating the water’s surface.  
  
The image began to blur, and the lights melted together.  
  
Benjamin wiped the back of his wrist across his face, and when he opened his eyes again, he couldn’t pick out his lantern amongst the many bobbing points of candlelight. It was there, though. It hadn’t sank.


	5. Chapter 5

Later that summer, something unbelievable happened: Sparrow’s sister, Siloh, moved back to Sugar Blossom. The whole town turned out for her arrival. In Benjamin’s mind she’d remained the way he’d last seen her: pale-faced and quavering, a tremulous wisp of a girl. But on the day of her return she looked like a new person: she was pink-cheeked and vibrant, simultaneously smiling and crying as she was hugged and congratulated from all sides.  
  
Benjamin hadn’t known her well, but he still felt the change of energy that followed that day. It was like a lingering fog had finally lifted. Suddenly, there was light again. Not only had someone new moved in, but someone had finally _returned_. The town might survive, after all.  
  
They’d barely gotten over the shock and excitement of Siloh’s return when letters written in Fable’s delicate, orderly handwriting were delivered to every house in town to announce the planned re-opening date of the public library. Fable herself arrived a few days in advance with several new trunks in tow. She’d been dull and despondent during her last few months in Sugar Blossom, not wanting to leave but somehow convinced that she needed to. But the Fable who returned was exactly as she used to be: brimming with energy and anticipation and eager to get to work.  
  
Benjamin left work early to visit the library on the day of its grand reopening. There was a lingering smell of dust inside; but, more noticeably, there was also something bright and tantalizing, like the fresh smell of the air after a short, hard rainfall. There was a little bouquet of wild sunflowers on the front desk. Fable waved him over as soon as she saw him, and Ember, curled on a high shelf, stirred slightly from a nap and uttered a sleepy but welcoming “mrrrp.” Senah was browsing at one of the bookcases, and Demetri was already at a table with a book of atlases and a notepad. They glanced over and smiled in greeting, but otherwise stuck to their respective business.  
  
“Hi, Benjamin!” Fable said, just quiet enough to qualify as a whisper. “I wasn’t expecting you to come by until your day off.”  
  
“And miss the big day? Never.”  
  
As he approached the checkout desk, Fable stepped out from behind it and bounced up onto her toes to give him a quick, gentle hug.  
  
“Are you planning to stay for awhile? I can make some tea.”  
  
“Thank you, but no. Just wanted to give you a more proper ‘hello’ than we got to have the other day. Though if you’ve got any recommendations while I’m here, I’d be happy to take a book home with me.”  
  
Fable’s eyes brightened. “Actually, I’ve been holding one I think you might like.”  
  
She turned to a shelf behind the checkout desk and selected a book with a brown cover. She held it out in both hands with the front cover and titled displayed to Benjamin: a copy of _A Brick and a Nail_. Benjamin chuckled quietly and shook his head.  
  
“Your judgment is spot on as always, Fable, but I’m afraid you’re too late. Sawyer gave me a copy earlier this year.”  
  
“Ah!” Fable tucked the book back against her chest, hugging it sympathetically. “I’ve been out-librarianed already! I’ll have to re-double my efforts. Though I wish he’d mentioned that to me!”  
  
“Sawyer? You talked to him?”  
  
“Well, of course! I introduced myself the day I moved back, but he also came in this morning. He brought me those sunflowers, actually. One of the very first things he said was that he’s glad the town has a library again so that you’ll have access to more books.”  
  
“He did?” Benjamin asked, stupidly.  
  
“He did! He seems like a very nice person—even though he told me that he doesn’t read much. I’m glad you two have become such close friends.” Fable beamed at him.  
  
Benjamin shuffled, ducking his head a little. “I’m not sure if we’re really all that close…”  
  
“Well, he seems to think so! Have you considered that maybe some people find you likable? And opening up to people a little more would do you some good!”  
  
“Right,” Benjamin said, doubtfully.  
  
“Well, tell me how you've _been_! You look well.”  
  
“Same as always. But you’re the one who’s been away: what have _you_ been up to?”  
  
“Look, see, you’re changing the topic already!” Fable scolded.  
  
“I ain’t got anythin’ to say about myself.”  
  
“We shall see about that.” Fable narrowed her eyes at him in challenge, and then drew in a slow breath. She wound a hand through her hair and twisted a loop of it around her fingers, something she often did when she was collecting her thoughts before speaking. “As for myself, I hardly know where to begin. More than anything, I’m just happy to be back in Sugar Blossom. You can't imagine how much I've missed everyone. Everything feels just the same—but also completely different. It feels like… like all the dust has finally been blown off something, and now I can finally recognize that it should have looked like all along. Oh, I should be better at similes than this! Does it feel that way to you, too?”  
  
“Yeah,” Benjamin said quietly. He didn’t know how to express it, either, but he understood exactly what she meant. “Yeah.”  
  
“In any case, why don’t you start by telling me about—oh, are you ready to check out, Senah?”  
  
“Just whenever you’re ready,” Senah said hastily. She’d come toward the front desk but had stopped several feet away to give them space while they conversed. She was carrying a formidable heap of books, her chin braced against the top of the stack to hold it steady.  
  
Benjamin stepped off to the side, opening up space in front of Fable’s desk. “Go ahead; I should get goin’. It’s real good to see you again, Fable.”  
  
“Same to you,” Fable said, smiling. “Let’s get lunch soon and catch up properly, alright? I want to hear about everything that’s happened. And I’ll definitely find a book that you’ll love!”  


* * *

  
Later that same week, Sawyer marched into the craft shop, triumphantly counted out the cash for the cream-colored rug onto the counter, and then said, “Okay, now what do I have to do to bribe you to help me carry it?”

Benjamin was in the middle of a painting job that he couldn’t leave unfinished, and Hunter was out taking measurements at the general store, but the weather forecast for the next day was favorable, so Sawyer agreed to come back the following evening. Benjamin finished painting an hour later, but after that he couldn’t focus on any of his other work. A half-formed idea had come upon him suddenly, and it muddled up everything else he tried to do. After unsuccessful attempts to plane some fresh planks and to mix a batch of varnish, Benjamin gave up. He left the work room, pulled down the folding stairs to the attic, and took down a box.

He had backup copies of the construction plans for nearly every building in town to help facilitate repairs, renovations, and other work. The plans for the Hayseeds’—no, Sawyer’s—farmhouse were near the top of the box. He’d consulted them during the winter when the property sale was being negotiated so that he could conduct a thorough inspection and arrange any necessary repairs before Sawyer arrived. It was a comfortable little house, and the Hayseeds had maintained it well, but it was small. The Hayseeds had always lived simply, and they’d never had children to necessitate more space. Sawyer lived alone, but…

Benjamin grabbed himself a beer and settled down with the plans and a few extra pages of notes he’d made during his last inspection. The house had a good foundation, and there hadn’t been any sign of settling or shifting. But it was backed up against a cliff, and the earth around the house was filled with sunken boulders, so further excavation would be somewhat difficult. The framing for the wall was still in good shape, though, and so were the ceiling joists…

Benjamin made a little sketch in an unused corner of his old notes. He worked on it absent-mindedly for a couple of minutes, and then got up to fetch his drafting paper and tools. Sensing that he intended to do something that required concentration, Boots appeared to offer her assistance by lying on the edges of the paper and pawing at his pencil every few seconds. Between sips of beer, he roughed out a few designs, and then went back and jotted down notes next to each one: approximate cost and time for completion, materials that would need to be ordered, and some options for new trim and other finishes that would match the existing interior. Benjamin finished a second beer before he’d gotten all of his ideas down, by which point Hunter had returned and it was time for dinner. They fixed themselves uncooked food and made some small talk, and then Benjamin went back to clean up his drawings while Hunter lounged around watching television. Boots sat on the table to supervise. When he was finally satisfied with the results, he rolled the papers together and tucked them into the carpet.

Sawyer returned earlier than anticipated the following afternoon. Summer’s blistering heat had passed, but Benjamin had spent the whole day on a labor-intensive project, and he was sweaty and covered in sawdust when Sawyer shouldered his way into the shop. Benjamin had intended to take a shower before he left the house, but he had to settle for making Sawyer wait at the counter while he went upstairs to wash his hands, splash water on his face, and change his shirt.

The shirt gave him trouble. He’d just taken one from the closet when he thought, quite out of the blue, _no, the other one looks better_. He put the first shirt back and grabbed a second one. And, then, immediately, he second-guessed himself. The _first_ shirt was actually better. He took it back out again. Now he was holding two shirts. For a full ten seconds he was utterly paralyzed, and he stood there with a shirt in each hand, completely lost. Then he heard Sawyer laugh from downstairs and say something to Boots. He shoved the second shirt back into the closet and hastily changed.

The bundled-up carpet was heavy, but the weight was manageable when distributed between two people. Mademoiselle met them at the boundary of Sawyer’s farm, tail wagging, and fell into step beside them. A couple of cows and chickens were going about their business in the barnyard. One of the cows approached the fence and stretched out her head toward Sawyer as he passed, and he leaned over to kiss her forehead. She flapped her ears and scratched her chin on the edge of the fencepost, pleased.

Mademoiselle accompanied them to the front door but didn’t follow them into the house. Once inside, they were approached by a white cat who sat down in their path and yawned at them. She was sleeker and fatter than the last time he’d seen her, but Benjamin recognized the stray who’d lurked near the beach. Now she had a pretty little collar and everything.

“I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced,” Benjamin said after they’d propped the carpet against the wall. He crouched to let the cat sniff his outstretched hand.

“Oh, that’s Her Imperial Majesty,” Sawyer said. “She’s pleased make your acquaintance.”

“Oh. Uh. Does she have a nickname?”

“You may address her as ‘Your Majesty.’”

“I see.” Benjamin looked at Sawyer, and then looked at the cat, and then looked back at Sawyer. “Well, but shouldn’t it be Her Impurrial Majesty?”

Startlingly, Sawyer burst into laughter. He laughed helplessly for several seconds, managed to regain some semblance of control, and then looked at Benjamin and dissolved all over again. Benjamin stood up and waited patiently for him to finish.

“That was such a fucking dad joke!” he choked out, shaking his head. “I didn’t know you had it in you! You can’t just spring something like that on me without warning!”

“Oh, you don’t like that one? How about Her Imperial Meowjesty?”

“Fuck you!” Sawyer wiped at his eyes, attempting to swallow more laughter.

“No? Her Impawrial Majesty?”

Sawyer gave an undignified snort and turned away, his shoulders shaking. While his back was turned, Benjamin slipped the roll of plans out of the carpet and tossed them onto the kitchen counter. Then he said, “Do you think that if you just stand there laughin’ I’ll move all your furniture by myself?”

“Piss off,” Sawyer laughed. He wiped at his eyes. “Okay, let’s do the bed first.”

Together, they moved all of Sawyer’s furniture out of the way and unrolled the carpet into place. Then the furniture had to be moved back again. It was not terribly complicated work, and between them it went quickly, but Benjamin was slightly warm by the time they were done. Sawyer had sweat on his temples.

But the room looked good. Benjamin felt rather pleased with himself when they finally stepped back to study the new arrangement. Sawyer didn’t have much to his name: the carpet softened the sparsity of the interior, and the house immediately felt more… lived in. More permanent, somehow. Established.

And the carpet itself didn’t look half bad, either. Perhaps he’d have to try his hand at weaving again this year.

Sawyer had visited the carpentry shop many times, but this was the first time that Benjamin had been to the farmhouse since it had sold. He’d avoided it somewhat deliberately. He’d dreaded seeing his old friends’ home and personal presence… _replaced_ by other things. But the experience was not as uncomfortable as he’d feared. It was like looking at an old photograph of a friend: the differences stood out, but the familiarity was unmistakable. Noah would have been satisfied with Sawyer’s stewardship.

“Can I talk you into having a beer?” Sawyer asked as he roamed into the kitchen. Then he saw the plans and paused, frowning like was trying to remember where the papers had come from and how long he’d left them lying there. He picked up the top page and examined it. “Are these yours?”

“Oh.” Benjamin reached out as though to take the papers away, but pulled back. “I just had some ideas about this house. I’ve remodeled a few of the places in town, so I wanted to, ah, to let you know that the option is there. If you ever want it.”

“Huh. You did all these drawings by hand?” Sawyer picked up the entire bundle of plans and thumbed through them one at a time, peering at the notes and illustrations. Benjamin cringed to himself. Shit, he thought; he’s dyslexic, you fool; all those notes are probably just confusing to him.

“Well, I’ve got a draftin’ kit. I’m not, ah, I’m not tryin’ to pressure you into any business. I just thought—well, it was just an idea.”

Now that they were in Sawyer’s hands, the plans and notes suddenly seemed absurdly meticulous and over-zealous. Benjamin felt an irrational impulse to grab the papers and crumple them up.

Sawyer raised his eyes from the plans and looked at him. “So what brought this on? I know you said it’s ‘just an idea,’ but you didn’t just think of it right here on the spot. You put some real work into these drawings.”

“Well.” Benjamin shuffled his feet a little. “You’ve been, ah. That is - I appreciate what you’ve— What I mean to say is that you’ve… been a good neighbor to us. Me and Hunter. You’ve gone out of your way to… Well, you’ve been generous to us, and I wanted to return the favor in some way, and… this is what I know how to do.”

“Oh. That’s. That’s really thoughtful of you, Benjamin.” A hesitant, almost incredulous smile appeared on Sawyer’s face and gradually widened. “I really appreciate it. But I really don’t expect anything in return for any of that, and this would be a lot of work.”

“It’s part of my job. I enjoy it well enough. It’s no burden to me.”

“You can really do all this on your own?”

“More or less. Me and Hunter. I’ve got a license for the electrical work, too.”

“Hm. Well, come on, sit down, let’s talk about this.” Sawyer took a seat at his dining table and patted the back of one of the other chairs. Benjamin pulled out the chair and sat down as well.

Sawyer spread all the plans out across the table and studied them. Benjamin had drawn a number of possibilities, including both the floor plans and the elevations: an expansion on the western side of the house; a new second level; a loft above the main room; a larger main level _and_ a second story… Sawyer was absorbed for several moments, and then he said, “So how soon could you start working? Hypothetically?”

“Well, ah. If you wanted to do a horizontal expansion, I’d recommend waitin’ till next spring or summer. I’m pretty confident in my schedule estimates for the framin’ work and all that, but diggin’ space for the foundation might take awhile. The cold weather hit us pretty early last year. The whole thing could get stalled if the ground freezes up.”

“So you’d recommend the second level?”

Benjamin shrugged. “I’m not recommendin’ anythin’. It depends on what you want. You’d get more floorspace out of a second level, but we’d have to tear off your roof. And we’d have to get into the walls to run the electricity—and the pipes, if you want another bathroom. But we could at least get it framed and insulated before it gets real cold, sure.”

“I see. So, what do these prices include?” Sawyer pointed at some of the notes.

“Labor and materials for all the rough work, and base prices for the finishes. The actual cost will depend on what you chose. I included some notes about alternatives.”

“I see,” Sawyer said again. “What if I help with some of the labor?”

“Say again?”

“The construction. What if I helped? I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but I did some construction work with one of my uncles awhile back. I picked up enough to be moderately useful.”

“You sure you want to give yourself another thing to do? You’ve got plenty on your plate already.” Benjamin made a vague motion through the air with one hand to indicate all of Sawyer’s potential responsibilities.

“I’m totally serious. I’d really like to help. If I just end up getting in your way, you can ask me to stop; that’s fine.”

“You’re certain?”

“Completely.”

“Well, I wouldn’t hold you to it, but that’d affect the prices, sure. I’d have to do more guessin’ than I usually do, since we haven’t worked together before. You have some idea of what you might want, or should I make a new cost estimate sheet later?”

Sawyer selected one of the sets of plans and slid it across the table. “This one: full-height second floor, with a bathroom. We can start whenever you’re available.”

Benjamin was surprised. He had not expected any immediate decisions to occur, but he said “alright” and drew the plans toward himself. He scratched out the table of cost notes he’d already written, and together they spent the next hour re-calculating the cost details, working out a schedule, and choosing the finish details that Sawyer wanted. Part way into the process, Sawyer got up to fetch the beer he’d forgotten to bring earlier, and they drank a little as they talked over the plans. Somewhere along the line, they also reached an agreement that Sawyer would provide two of Benjamin and Hunter’s meals each day to help mitigate some of the overhead costs. It was an unorthodox arrangement, but Benjamin didn’t object. He could feed himself well enough, but it was a hassle he’d just as soon avoid.

At the end of the discussion, Benjamin wrote out a simple work agreement and a draft payment schedule, which Sawyer laboriously read through. They signed their names, shook hands, and agreed to begin construction in twelve days. Benjamin went home that night with strange feeling of anticipation.

Their work schedule went like this: Benjamin and Hunter arrived at Sawyer’s farm around six or six-thirty in the morning, when it was still cold and dim outside, and Sawyer fed them breakfast. He turned out to be a respectable cook, and the meals were generous. There was always an abundance of eggs and coffee, as well as rotating selections of pancakes, or buttered grits, or pans of biscuits, or fried heaps of grated potatoes. After breakfast, Sawyer did chores around the farm while Benjamin and Hunter went to work on the house. Sawyer typically left the farm around mid-morning to run errands and buy supplies, and then they would eat a late lunch together: sandwiches, or stews from the slow cooker, or curries with rice. At that point, Hunter left to open the shop for the afternoon and to handle their normal work orders while Sawyer took his place at the house.

The afternoon work tended to progress more slowly. Sawyer didn’t complain about much of anything, and he had plenty of physical endurance, but he was less experienced than Hunter—and he didn’t know Benjamin quite as well. Most of the time, Hunter could understand what was wanted or needed of him without a single word being exchanged. They were efficient together. Sawyer was a quick learner, but the extra time it took Benjamin to show him how to do something the first time, and then to double-check his work afterward, meant that things moved more slowly. But progress was made all the same. They got the roof demolished; they put up new framing, new trusses; they got the new roofing put on, and the windows; they wired the new story pipes and ran the heating ducts; they put in the insulation and the wallboard. Everything took shape.

They worked into evenings for as long as the light allowed, and then cleaned and washed up. The evening routine varied. Sometimes Sawyer just washed his hands and then dashed off to finish another chore or to get a little work in at the mine, and Benjamin made his way home to rest. Sometimes they tried a bit of fishing. Wake had given him a fishing rod as a present several years ago; he wasn’t particularly good at it, but it was peaceful. Sometimes they just sat together—at Sawyer’s little table, or on the step outside his house—and drank beer while Sawyer threw a ball for Mademoiselle and Her Imperial Majesty chose whose lap with which she would grace her presence that evening.

But on the first night of construction, Sawyer offered to send Benjamin home with dinner for himself and Hunter in exchange for help prepping tomorrow’s lunch.

When Benjamin agreed, Sawyer set him to work peeling and chopping vegetables. Easy, mindless work. Sawyer took up station next to him and began cutting butter into a bowl of flour: the start of a pie crust.

“I hope you don’t mind eating vegetarian food,” Sawyer said after they’d worked for a couple of minutes. He put two rounds of pie dough into the refrigerator to chill and started pouring things into a pan. “If you want me to make you anything extra, please just ask. Construction isn’t easy work, and I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have enough energy for it. I’ve got some pretty good fish recipes that I used to make.”

“Thanks, but this’ll probably be good for me.” Benjamin clapped a hand against his stomach. “I should probably be on some kind of diet.”

“Really?” Sawyer looked him over skeptically. “I’d say that you could stand to gain a few.”

“Naw. I’ve been eatin’ pretty much the same as I always have, but I don’t burn it off like I used to. More vegetables can’t hurt.”

“Well, I won’t argue with you there. But, seriously, you can let me know if you feel like you’re not getting enough to eat.”

“Alright,” Benjamin said. “Thank you.”

The conversation lapsed as they moved on to different jobs: Benjamin was stationed over the pan and told to “just keep stirring.” Sawyer, meanwhile, sidled all over the kitchen to measure this and chop those and sift that. But the kitchen wasn’t large enough to easily accommodate two people at once, and Sawyer had to navigate carefully to avoid bumping Benjamin’s elbow while he stirred. “Behind you,” he said as he filled a pot with water. “On your left,” he said as he rummaged in a draw beside Benjamin for a spatula. But then, on his way back from taking a stick of butter from the fridge, he just touched Benjamin’s shoulder, very quickly and lightly, as he passed. Benjamin jumped. A drop sloshed out of the pan and sizzled on the burner.

Sawyer backed away and took a wooden spoon out of his mouth, where he’d been holding it between his teeth. “Sorry,” he said, grimacing.

“It’s alright.” Benjamin said. He rubbed at his shoulder before he could think better of it. “Just surprised me.”

He could feel the spot where he’d been touched. It was like a static charge had passed between them.

“Sorry,” Sawyer said again. “I— Oh, that looks like it’s ready. Here, I can take that now.”

He whisked the bubbling pan away from Benjamin, and in short order three little pot pies were assembled in earthenware ramekins and put in to bake.

“Okay, these should be ready for you in about forty-five minutes,” he said, running his hands under the tap.

“What else do you need me to do?”

“Oh, nothing. Go ahead and take a break.”

“What about cleanin’?”

“Don’t worry about it. I can do all the rest myself. Thank you, though.”

But Benjamin just stood there and looked at him. Had he done a bad job?

Eventually, Sawyer noticed that he hadn’t budged and made a little shooing motion at him. “It’s okay, man, you can sit down. I really appreciate your help, but you’ve already worked a full day. I just wanted to start baking those pies before it got too late, and having to do all the steps one at a time would have taken too long.”

The idea of ‘relaxing’ while someone else was still working made Benjamin uncomfortable, but he forced himself to walk over to his supply bag and take out the book that he'd been carrying since yesterday. He sat down at the table, and Mademoiselle, who’d been diligently watching the kitchen for any fallen scraps, finally abandoned her post to come lie down across his feet. Sawyer kept up his work in the kitchen, accompanied by the miscellaneous sounds of food preparation.

But Benjamin had only read a few sentences when Sawyer said, “Oh, is that from the library?”

He tucked his thumb into the book to mark his place and looked up. “Yeah; I’ve already read everythin’ I’ve got at home.”

“That’s _The Blacksmith’s Apprentice_ , right? How is it?”

“Can’t say. Just gettin’ started.”

“Oh—I’m sorry for interrupting. That was thoughtless of me. Go ahead and keep reading.”

“I don’t mind,” Benjamin said sincerely. “You recognize it?”

“Yeah, I know that version of the cover. It was recommended to me by a librarian, actually. I used to check out audio books—tapes and things—to listen to while I was working. I kind of miss it now.”

“You could talk to Fable about orderin’ some. She wants everyone to be able to use the library.”

“You think she’d do that?”

“Don’t see why not.”

“Man, that’d be great. Thanks for the suggestion.” Sawyer dropped his eyes to continue his cooking work, but Benjamin could see him smiling to himself.

Benjamin managed to read only a few more sentences before he paused, a thought rising in his mind. He raised his eyes from the book. “Would you, ah, like me to read it? Out loud?”

Sawyer’s head snapped up. “Seriously? Would you mind?”

“Don’t know if I’d be any good at it, but sure.”

“Well, I mean, you don’t have to. But, yeah: I’d really like that.”

“Alright.” Benjamin cleared his throat and returned to the very start of the book: “ _In May, an unusually late blizzard buried all of the houses in the valley up to their gables_...”

He read for about thirty minutes while Sawyer finished what he was doing and started cleaning up the kitchen. Then the timer went off, and Sawyer took the little pot pies out of the oven. He filled two glasses of water, brought them to the table, and sat down. Benjamin nodded his thanks took a quick sip. Sawyer leaned an elbow on the table and sat there with his chin resting on his palm, his eyes closed. Sometimes he smiled a little as Benjamin read, and Benjamin found himself glancing over regularly.

He’d meant to continue reading for only another ten or fifteen minutes while the pies cooled, but he simply kept going until his stomach gave a sudden, audible growl. Sawyer sat up straight, his eyes flying open. He looked at Benjamin, then looked at the wall clock. Thirty-five minutes had passed. Sawyer jumped out of his chair.

“Oh, fuck, you must be starving!”

“A little. I’m alright. I didn’t notice the time.”

“Neither did I, sorry,” Sawyer said as he threw himself into the kitchen. “You’ve got a nice narrative voice, by the way.”

“Oh. Well. Don’t think I got the pacin’ quite right.”

“Man, can’t you ever just take a compliment?” Sawyer laughed. He came back to the table and delivered a wicker basket into Benjamin’s hands. Two of the pot pies were tucked inside, wrapped in a hand towel. “Sorry for making you wait.”

“I ain’t got the right to complain about a free meal. Thank you.” Then he added: “Smells good.”

“Well, here’s hoping they taste good, too.”

“I ain’t worried about that.” Benjamin stood up, and Mademoiselle huffed disapprovingly as he extracted his feet from under her. “Well then. See you tomorrow at the same time?”

“I’ll be here,” Sawyer said, grinning. “Good-night. And thank you for reading. I enjoyed it.”

“Glad to be useful,” Benjamin said, and then he picked up the wicker basket and went outside. He left the book behind with the other job supplies.

Hunter was flat on his back on the floor with Boots on his stomach when Benjamin appeared. He sat up quickly, and Boots made a dissatisfied noise as she was displaced.

“Oh, hey, you were out later than I thought,” Hunter said. Then he saw the basket. “What’s that?”

“Pie. From Sawyer.”

“Pie?!” Hunter stood up and hovered over Benjamin’s shoulder as he unpacked the basket onto the dining table. His face fell with slight disappointment. “Oh, I thought it’d be, like, _pie_. Like pumpkin or apple or something.”

“Well, you don’t _have_ to eat it…”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t eat it!”

“No meat,” Benjamin warned.

“As long I don’t have to make it, who cares? I’m gonna grab some forks.”

“Napkins, too.”

“Okay, okay.”

Hunter returned with silverware and napkins, and both of them sat down at the table with a ramekin. Hunter punched his fork through the crust, and steam billowed out. “Oh, it’s still warm. Smells pretty good, too.” He lifted up a forkful of the filling and chewed thoughtfully. His face lit up with approval, and he ate several more bites in rapid succession. Then he said: “So Sawyer couldn’t come over?”

Benjamin stared at his nephew. He said, “Huh?”

“Well, you invited him over, right?”

“Uh. No.”

“What!”

“What?” Benjamin frowned. “Why would I invite him over?”

“Because he made us dinner!” Hunter waved his fork at the pies sitting between them. “Geez, did you just take these and leave?”

“Well, I.” Benjamin was somewhat taken aback by Hunter’s sudden concern with etiquette. “I helped him make it? And, uh, I read to him a little.”

“You read to him…?”

“Yeah. A library book. He can’t— He doesn’t have much time to read…”

“He already told me he has dyslexia,” Hunter said, matter-of-factly. “Well, if he ever does this again, you’ve got to invite him to eat with us, okay? He’s still pretty new here, and we’re his closest neighbors. We have to be hospitable!”

“Okay,” Benjamin said soberly, trying not to show that he was on the verge of laughing. He wondered if he ought to be more offended about being given lessons in manners by his nephew, but he was mostly amused and, in some way, also proud. He’d hardly provided a successful model of sociability, yet Hunter had developed a strong sense of conscientiousness and generosity. It was gratifying to know that he'd helped raise someone who'd turned out to be a better person than him.

They focused quietly their meals until Benjamin at last worked up the nerve to ask, “How, ah are things goin’ with Annabelle?”

Hunter immediately took an extra-large bite of pie and spent several seconds chewing very thoroughly. “They’re, um—good. She’s—great. Er, how about you?”

Benjamin frowned in confusion. “What about me?” Hunter already knew everything that happened in his life—which wasn’t much. There hadn't been any significant changes.

“Oh, you know—anything,” Hunter said, vaguely. He shoved all of the remaining pie into his mouth.

“Well, uh. I suppose things are I’m fine.”

“Well, that’s good,” Hunter said when he’d finally finished chewing. He got up from the table and picked up the empty ramekin. “I’m gonna go wash this. Want me to take yours?”

“Sure. Thank you.” Benjamin scooped up the remaining mouthful of pie and slid his own ramekin toward Hunter.

“So,” Hunter said as he stacked the ramekins together and picked up the forks, “what do you think we’re gonna have for breakfast?”


	6. Chapter 6

Despite Hunter’s etiquette lecture, Benjamin never did extend Sawyer an invitation to have a meal at their house. It never seemed to be the right time to ask; he never seemed to have the right kind of food at home. They ate their dinners separately on most nights, but, sometimes, too tired to even think about cooking for themselves, Benjamin collected Hunter from the shop after closing time and they all went to the Midnight Tavern to eat. On those occasions, one of two things usually happened: Sawyer ended up at a separate table with someone who wanted a chance to catch up with him over drinks and meal, or other people gravitated to _their_ table to eat and talk, and Benjamin would find himself surrounded by three or four people he hadn’t arrived with. Sawyer drew people to him, and Benjamin simply experienced the results. Just by being there and listening as stories were swapped back and forth—stories about work, about old injuries, about hobbies—he ended up learning things about people that he’d never known during years of acquaintance.  
  
Somehow, he also also found the time to keep reading to Sawyer. They worked through the book in little half- and quarter-hour chunks: while Sawyer washed dishes after lunch; while they waited for pots of coffee to brew; while Sawyer pulled splinters out of his palm.  
  
It was nice. It was all so nice that Benjamin felt _guilty_ , like he had no right to be enjoying himself so much.  
  
But he couldn’t cancel the project, and he couldn’t bring himself turn down trips to the Midnight Tavern, or opportunities to keep reading, or the time they spent fishing or drinking. He didn’t have any good excuses.  
  
And so the days went on like that: the three of them working together and spending their free time together while the house took form around them, until they got to the second-to-last day of the project schedule, which was when Sawyer, toweling sweat off the back of his neck, said, “I think I want to go to the hot spring. Do you want to come?”  
  
Benjamin didn’t really think about it. He said, “Alright.”  
  
They’d fallen slightly behind schedule that week and had pushed hard throughout the day to put themselves back on track to finish the next evening. It’d been an unseasonably warm autumn day, and hot water didn’t sound very appealing, but he could feel muscle aches starting to set in around his shoulders and down his back. The spring would help. The extra work they’d put in that day would be pointless if he was too stiff to work efficiently during the next.  
  
Sawyer had already pulled a trunk from beneath his bed and was taking out fresh towels. “Do you want to stop at your place to grab a change of clothes? I’ve also got a few over-sized things that’d probably fit you.”  
  
Benjamin snorted quietly. “That’s fine. I’ll get my own.”  
  
Sawyer’s head snapped up, his expression stricken.  
  
“Oh, I mean—not that _you’re_ over-sized. You’re, uh, you’re—fine. I just mean that—relative to me—” Sawyer made some rough motions in the air: trying, it seemed, to convey relative scales of size. Benjamin just looked on, not saying anything, content to let him flounder through his explanation. “Fucking… never-mind! You know what I mean.”  
  
Benjamin caught Her Imperial Majesty’s eye; Sawyer’s wild gestures had gotten her attention. “Do _you_ know what he means?” he asked the cat.  
  
“Fuck off,” Sawyer said.  
  
They set out a moment later, Sawyer with an armful of towels and a change of clothes. When they got to Benjamin’s house, Sawyer went on ahead while he unlocked the door to the find some clothes for himself. Hunter wasn’t at home; he’d already made plans to spend the evening with Annabelle. Boots appeared at Benjamin’s ankles and gave a prolonged, woeful “miaow” to inform him that she was starving to death. Her food bowl was empty, but not due to any neglect. A few pieces of dry food scattered across the floor showed that she’d already devoured her meal, so Benjamin just gave her neck a rough scruffle and went back on his way.  
  
When Benjamin reached the top of the steps that connected the main road to the clearing around the spring, however, Sawyer was still at the edge of the spring, and Benjamin saw him, bare from head to toe, as he waded into the water.  
  
Oh, Benjamin thought.  
  
He stopped walking and stood there at the far end of the clearing. After a moment, Sawyer, now chest-deep in the middle of the spring, turned around and saw him. He put an arm up and waved ‘hello’ as though Benjamin might now know who he was.  
  
“Hey!” he called. “There’s towel over there.”  
  
There were, in fact, two towels hanging in tree branches on opposite sides of the spring. A loose heap of Sawyer’s clothes lay on the ground under one of them. Benjamin made his way over the the other towel, but he didn’t touch it. The spring was reasonably private, all things considered. It was tucked partway into the hillside and could only be reached or seen from one direction. The difference in elevation protected it from sight from the main road, and it was hemmed in by rock walls on the other sides. Trees and scrubby bushes bordered the edge of the water, enough for a bather to hide if someone else approached unexpectedly—but there was little chance of that. The spring had fallen out of popularity during the last few years.  
  
For no reason at all, Benjamin pulled a yellowed leaf off a low branch and rolled it up. He unrolled it, then tried rolling it again in the opposite direction. The leaf crackled and started to disintegrate into big, golden flakes. He dropped it. He hadn’t thought about what he would do or feel once he got here. He’d gotten into the habit of just agreeing to anything that was asked of him, but this was… different than having drinks at the Midnight or going fishing. Wasn’t it?  
  
After a moment, he heard Sawyer clear his throat. Benjamin glanced over. Sawyer’s face was tense with anxiety.  
  
“Hey, I’m sorry, did I make things weird?”  
  
Benjamin swallowed. “What do you mean?”  
  
Sawyer drug a hand down his face and took a deep breath. “Um. I know some people don’t like undressing around someone who’s, uh, not straight. So if you’re not comfortable, I - uh - I understand. You don't have to stay, if you don't want to.”  
  
Something about Benjamin’s expression must have changed because Sawyer’s own expression shifted into something bordering on panic. “Oh—did you not—? Uh, fuck, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean for that to be a secret. I—”  
  
It was the anxious tightness in Sawyer’s voice that finally spurred Benjamin to do something. He began unbuttoning his shirt, maintaining a careful mental blankness, not dwelling at all on what he was doing. “It’s fine,” he said brusquely. “You’re not—  You don’t have to worry about that.”  
  
Sawyer just stared at him for a few seconds, and then he seemed to realize that Benjamin was actually going to continue taking his clothes off. He abruptly turned around and dove under the water.  
  
Benjamin stepped into the spring shortly thereafter and waded until the water was up to his chest. Sawyer resurfaced a few paces away, his hair plastered flat. He swept it off his face, creating whorls around his forehead like the crests of waves.  
  
“You know,” Benjamin said conversationally, “you’re not supposed to submerge your head in hot water. Not good for your brain.”  
  
“Uh-oh,” Sawyer said with utmost seriousness. “I can’t afford to lose any more brain power. I already can’t read; what's next?”  
  
Benjamin skirted the edge of the spring until he bumped into a familiar spot where a stone spur jutted out underneath the water to form a little perch. It was wide enough to sit on; he could rest there comfortably with the water almost at shoulder level. Sawyer roved around the pool like a dog, steam billowing around him.  
  
“I’m surprised more people don’t come here,” Sawyer went on. “I come here pretty often, but I never see anyone else. Doesn’t matter what time of day.”  
  
“Oh, maybe that’s the problem. People are tryin’ to avoid seein’ too much of scrawny farmers.”  
  
Sawyer barked out a laugh. “Scrawny?! Come on!” He held both arms above the water and flexed them, then kissed his own bicep.  
  
“Nadia liked it here,” Benjamin said, for no particular reason. The thought just came to him. “She liked to soak her feet. Sometimes we brought dinner. Maybe a bottle of wine. Nadia managed to push me into the water nearly every time. Thought it was hilarious. I never got any smarter about it, somehow.”  
  
Sawyer dropped his arms back down. “Well, that’s what love does, right? Makes you stupid around someone.”  
  
“That’s a cynical thought,” Benjamin observed.  
  
“Oh, I don’t know. Not necessarily. Sometimes that’s a good thing.”  
  
“You got some experience in the area?”  
  
Sawyer scooped up a double handful of water and dashed it against his face. Some of his hair slithered back over his forehead. “I don’t know.”  
  
“Don’t know?” Benjamin repeated. Did Sawyer mean he didn’t know whether he’d ever been in love? The thought was baffling. How could someone not know? Being in love with Nadia was a daily part of his existence; he could not imagine his own personal identity without that fact shaping it.  
  
But, well, when had it started? He could recall the moment he’d _realized_ he was in love, but not the moment when it had actually become true in the first place. What had made him fall in love? How long had it taken between it actually happening and then recognizing that it _had_ happened?  
  
Sawyer tossed his head to shake off the water that had gathered on the tip of his nose and chin. “Well, they say that if you ‘don’t know’ whether you were in love then you definitely weren’t, right? But maybe that’s just because I never expected anything to stick, you know? So I didn’t give all of the possibilities the necessary introspection. I’ve had some good relationships. I’ve cared about some people. Maybe I did love some of them and would have realized it if I had more time to figure it out. But I was kind of a drifter. I could only count on most jobs lasting a season, or a year; if I met anyone in the process, there was always this sense that one or both of us would have to move on eventually. Everything came with an expiration date. I didn’t feel stable enough to encourage anyone to tag along with me, and I didn’t want to just follow someone else while _they_ moved around. This is the first place where I can actually think about things in the long term, and it’s, um - I like it, but it’s overwhelming.”  
  
“Sugar Blossom is a good place. It… Things were hard, for awhile, but they’re… they’re getting better.”  
  
“I’m told that a lot of people left. Did you ever consider moving?”  
  
“No,” Benjamin said immediately. It came out with unexpected force. He swallowed and turned his eyes away. “People left because they thought they could find places that would be better for them. I know I couldn’t find anywhere better for me. I, ah…” He coughed and rubbed the edge of his hand back and forth across his mouth.  
  
“Nadia didn’t leave much behind. She wanted to be cremated, and she, uh, she didn’t even want to have a headstone. She was that kind of person: didn’t really take stock in _things_. This place is what was important to her. So if I left Sugar Blossom, I’d be leavin’ the one thing that still reminds me of her. I can’t do that.”  
  
“What about your ring?” Sawyer asked quietly.  
  
“It, ah. It’s important to me, but it doesn’t _remind_ me of her. It’s just a thing. It doesn’t have a… personality of its own. You know? I don’t… really know how to explain it…”  
  
“Mm. I think I understand what you mean.”  
  
Benjamin sighed and wound a hand into his hair; he pulled on it until his scalp began to ache. Sometimes a little pain helped him focus. “Sorry for the depressin’ talk.”  
  
“No need to apologize,” Sawyer said, then paused. He seemed to be chewing on the inside of his cheek. “If the town had collapsed completely and everyone left, what would you have done?”  
  
Benjamin didn’t answer right away. He wasn’t sure if he wanted Sawyer to know exactly how much he’d thought about that possibility—about how real and imminent it had seemed. “I figured I could get by here on my own,” he said at last. “I could bring in a generator to keep power goin’ at the house, and I’ve already got my own well. I could keep the house in pretty good shape; could build a lot of what I need. Food, I don’t know. S’ppose I could raise some chickens for eggs and such, maybe grow some vegetables. I could probably make arrangements to have some supplies shipped in by boat every now and then. Enough to manage.”  
  
Sawyer laughed faintly, but it didn’t sound jovial. “Shit. You were really ready for that to happen, huh? But what about Hunter?”  
  
“What about him? Hunter likes Sugar Blossom, but he’s a smart kid. He’s got good trade skills. He'd do well anywhere.”  
  
“You don’t think he’d want to stay with you?”  
  
“I’d hope not,” Benjamin laughed. “It’d be a waste for him to live somewhere without any other people. And we’d tear each other apart without any other distractions. Nah - this wouldn’t be the right place for him. I’d want him to leave if everyone else did.”  
  
Sawyer had finally found his own perch on the opposite side of the spring and had stopped moving. He tipped his head back and looked at the sky: bright with stars. “Could you really stand living here on your own? I don’t think I could do that.”  
  
“I ain’t sayin’ it’s what I’d want, but I guess I could get by.”  
  
“But you’d put yourself through that because… because of Nadia? I understand the importance behind your reasons, but what you said about Hunter going to waste here: the same is true for you. And I’m not just talking about technical skills going to waste: you’ve got too much personality for just _getting by_ to be the best option.”  
  
Benjamin was bitterly, bitingly angry for a moment, and then the anger passed. Sawyer had always tried to tread carefully around Nadia, but he’d never met her, never even seen her picture. She didn’t mean anything to him. She _couldn’t_. That wasn’t his fault. Benjamin unclenched his fists.  
  
“It’s not just about Nadia—it’s this entire place. I can’t stand to live anywhere else. I’ve tried. I wasn’t born here, but nowhere else felt like home. And I’m— Well, I feel calm here. Calmer than anywhere else. I don’t know if I’d survive if I left.”  
  
Sawyer dropped his eyes. “I see,” he said, quietly.  
  
Benjamin sighed. He felt like he’d spoiled something that he didn't know how to fix. “No sense in thinkin’ about all that stuff. Things have gotten better since - well - since you took over the Hayseeds’ farm.”  
  
Sawyer dared to smile with one side of his mouth. “Oh, good, definitely no pressure to succeed, then.”  
  
Benjamin snorted. “I’m glad for what you’ve contributed, but it’s not your responsibility to save us, or save the town, or nothin’ like that. All you need to do is try to get by, same as the rest of us.”  
  
“Well, I’m glad someone feels that way…”  
  
“Meanin’ what?”  
  
“I mean—well, never-mind. Forget it.” Sawyer got up, suddenly, sending tiny waves across the water. “I’m really cooking in here. I think I’m done for the night. You want to stay?”  
  
“Nah. I’ll go.”  
  
Sawyer forged his way toward the shore, and Benjamin got up to follow. He kept his eyes on other things as Sawyer climbed out of the water.  
  
He actually did feel better. It felt good to wash off the day’s sweat, and the hot water had bled some of the ache out of his body. Residual heat lingered on his skin for a few seconds before the night air wicked it away. He felt more refreshed than he had all day—all week, maybe.  
  
He grabbed the towel waiting for him on the tree branch and blotted at his face—and, instantly, the skin of his arms and the back of his neck tightened into goosebumps. The towel smelled like Sawyer’s house. Until that very moment he wouldn’t have thought that he could even identify the smell. He’d spent plenty of time in Sawyer’s house of late, sure, but he’d never noticed it having a distinctive smell, and it had never affected him in any way. But here, encountered in isolation from the house itself, the smell had an almost physical potency, like a hand brushing right down his spine. He went warm again: his face, his neck, his chest. His stomach clenched almost nauseatingly.  
  
You’re kidding me, he thought in horror. What was wrong with him?  
  
He dried himself quickly, forcing himself not to care if it made it seem like he was uncomfortable being undressed around Sawyer. He put on his clothes, and put on his shoes, and slung the towel over his shoulder. He closed his hands into fists and pushed his fingernails into his palms as hard as he could stand. Then he turned around and went to the top of the path to wait for Sawyer.  
  
They left the spring without saying another word, but they didn’t walk with any haste. An owl called out softly from somewhere in the distance.  
  
As they approached the bridge, Sawyer cleared his throat and said, “Hey, I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds earlier. I didn’t mean to push you like that.”  
  
“I know you didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”  
  
“Thank you. I, ah, run my mouth more than I should, sometimes. But if I cross any lines, you can tell me.”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
Sawyer gave a quarter turn of his head, looking at Benjamin from the very corner of his eye. “Are you angry?”  
  
Benjamin exhaled. “I’m not angry,” he said, trying to put as much lightness as he could into his voice. “Talkin’ just tires me out.”  
  
“Oh, ah. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Nothin’ to be sorry about.” He turned his head to meet Sawyer’s stare more fully. Sawyer’s head jerked back around, immediately breaking the eye contact. “You’re worried you get on my nerves, aren’t you? Nah. You don’t bother me. With other people, I feel like I’ve gotta, mm, _perform_ the conversation the right way, or they’ll get worried. Think I’m goin’ through a bad spell. Another one. But I don’t gotta pretend one way or the other around you. And sometimes I just prefer bein’ a grouchy old man who don’t talk much. It’s easier.”  
  
“Oh,” Sawyer said, very quietly. And then, “You’re not old.”  
  
Benjamin said, “Well, arguin’ about it with you makes me feel old.”  
  
Sawyer chuckled and shrugged his shoulders as though to say _I am who I am_ , and the silence that followed was much more comfortable.  
  
They reached Benjamin’s house, presently. All the lights were off: Hunter wasn’t home yet.  
  
“After tomorrow you get enjoy havin’ your house all to yourself again,” Benjamin said as they came to his front door.  
  
“Ha, I guess so.” Sawyer shrugged loosely. He stood slightly off to one side. “It was nice to have some company, though.”  
  
“Mm. Well, I’m sure Hunter would like to drop by and see things once they’re all done with.”  
  
“Of course. I’d like that.”  
  
There was a pause. Sawyer shifted his weight from foot to foot.  
  
A strange sense of anticipation had arisen. It felt like there was something… unresolved about the situation. Unfinished. Like something else still needed to happen to bring the day to its conclusion.  
  
But, not knowing what it was, Benjamin just pulled the towel down from his shoulders and held it out. “Thanks for this.”  
  
Sawyer reached for the towel, and then a strange look passed over his face, and he suddenly took a step closer: startlingly close. Benjamin stepped back. He didn’t think about it. It was just reflex.  
  
Sawyer froze. The color drained out of his face so dramatically that Benjamin could see it happen, even in the dark.  
  
“You’re welcome,” Sawyer said, sounding strangled. He took the towel. And then he turned and walked off down the road.  
  
Benjamin stood there in front of his own door and watched Sawyer until he disappeared into the gloom. Then he stood for awhile longer.  
  
But the evening had turned crisp, and eventually Benjamin’s nose and fingers grew cold. He unlocked the front door and stepped inside.  
  
Boots was between his feet in an instant. “Mow?” she said.  
  
“I guess so, Boots,” Benjamin agreed vaguely.  
  
He went through the cash box and the day’s sales receipts. Hunter had written “cracked - sold at discount” on one of them. Benjamin filed the receipts away and then scrounged in the kitchen for something to eat. He settled for putting together a cold sandwich with slices of sharp cheese, mustard, and some cured ham. He ate it standing up, staring at the wall. When he was done, he washed the plate and knife, brushed his teeth, and went straight to bed. The unfinished feeling continued to tug at the back of his mind, but since he didn’t know what else to do about it, going to sleep seemed like the most reasonable step.  
  
But he didn’t fall asleep. He lay there in the dark without moving, but his mind simply skimmed over the surface of true restfulness, buzzing. What was it that was gnawing at the edge of his memory? What had he forgotten or neglected? The buzzing in his brain wouldn’t give him peace until he figured it out. He rolled over. Something to do with his conversations with Sawyer? Something to do with the remodel work? And then a clear and sudden thought hit him like a sucker punch: that moment with Sawyer outside the house had felt like the point at the end of a date when he was supposed to kiss the other person good-night.  
  
Benjamin sat bolt upright. “No,” he said out loud.  
  
He stood up, turned in an uncertain circle, and sat back down again.  
  
Where had that… What was he thinking?  
  
He was confused because he’d been around Sawyer so much lately, and because going to the spring was something he’d done with Nadia. His mind had simply created a connection between the two events. That was all; it didn’t mean anything.  
  
Benjamin forced himself to lie back down and close his eyes. He needed sleep. This idea would pass by the next day.  
  
But now that the thought had struck him, it was lodged there. He saw the moment play out again in his mind, but it wasn’t the same: the two of them face to face in front of the door, but instead of handing over the towel he put a hand on the back of Sawyer’s head, and he drew Sawyer to him, and he put his mouth against Sawyer’s mouth. And he… And then what?  
  
Benjamin sat up and put his head in his hands. He burned from his stomach all the way to his scalp. “No, no,” he said again.  
  
He got out of bed, wandered once around the room without any purpose, and again sat down. Five minutes later he stood once more and went to look out the window. The owl they’d heard earlier was still calling out now and then. The sky was almost cloudless, and the near-full moon lit the yard and empty road. He wasn’t tired in the slightest. He stood for a moment longer. Then, instead of getting back into bed, he redressed himself and went downstairs. He’d rather _do_ something than flop about uselessly. He was sitting at the big rug loom with Boots stretched full-length over his lap when Hunter got home some time later. He poked his head into the back room and waved, a little uncertainly.  
  
“Hi,” he said. “You’re awake.”  
  
“Yeah,” Benjamin said. He turned on the bench as much as Boots would permit. “Have a good time?”  
  
Hunter grinned, ducking his head. “It was nice, yeah. Oh, how about you? Think we’ll still finish tomorrow?”  
  
Benjamin turned back around, checking the tension on the rows he’d put down. “Think so.”  
  
“That’s great! Do you think I can visit once you’re done?”  
  
“He said that’d be fine.”  
  
“Oh—you asked? Thank you. Are you gonna stay up for awhile? Need anything?”  
  
“I’m fine. Thanks for lookin’ after the shop today.”  
  
“Of course. Hey, Boots, you want to come help me lock up?”  
  
Hunter bent down and patted at his knees. Boots cracked an eye open and regarded him narrowly, but deigned to accept the offer. She picked herself up, stretched thoroughly (dragging her tail across Benjamin’s face in the process), and hopped from Benjamin’s lap to see if Hunter would prove himself more attentive. Benjamin heard him chattering to her from the other room, and then the sound of footsteps moving up the stairs. He shifted his weight, picked up the shuttle, and continued to work.


	7. Chapter 7

Benjamin worked on the carpet for most of the night. It was slow, hesitant work at first, his fingers struggling to remember patterns of movement that were no longer well practiced. But as he continued, the process became smoother and easier. A kind of hyper-focus settled over him, as sometimes happened when he was involved in a new project. The only thing he could think of was the next row, and the next row, and the next. He forgot about being tired, and about Sawyer, and everything else going on outside of the work room. He liked falling into that type of focus, the peace that came with it.  
  
But, eventually, his fingers stiffened up and began to cramp, and he had to abandon the loom. When he got up from the bench and stepped back to survey his work, he found that the rug would not be good enough to sell. The difference in quality between the very bottom, where he’d been re-learning the technique as he went, compared to the most recent rows was simply too obvious.  
  
Well, no matter; it’d been good to get in the practice.  
  
It was still an hour earlier than he usually got out of bed, so he took a shower just for the sake of having something to do, then brewed a pot of coffee and sat outside with a mug. There was a light frost on the ground, and he hadn’t brought a coat. He hunched over the mug and let the steam warm his hands and face.  
  
Eventually, he heard sounds of life from inside the house. The door cracked open and Hunter poked his head out.  
  
“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay? Did you sleep last night?”  
  
Benjamin half turned to meet his nephew's eyes. Hunter looked confused and concerned.

“Mornin',” he said. “Just, uh, just excited to get started today. I’ll be inside in a minute.”  
  
Hunter frowned, neither of his questions answered. He hesitated, but all he said was a doubtful “okay” before he ducked back into the house. Benjamin swirled the last half-inch of coffee around and around in his cup, then drained it all in one swallow. But he continued to sit there until the last residual warmth from the mug had gone cold.  
  
When they reached the farmhouse, Sawyer seemed to be in typically good spirits, and he’d prepared an enormous breakfast: heaps of pan-fried potatoes, and buttery toast with jam, and omelets filled with sauteed slices of pumpkin and mushrooms. It was a good meal. Benjamin ate without looking up from his plate while Hunter and Sawyer bantered about next summer’s Lock Ball tournament.  
  
But when he and Hunter got down to work after breakfast, nothing seemed to go right. He wasn’t satisfied with the way Hunter had hung the bathroom door, and it had to be re-done. A spare box of nails got knocked onto the floor and had to be gathered up and put away before they could do anything else. And Hunter, tense and sullen after more than one reprimand, accidentally put a hole into the wallboard. By the time Sawyer came upstairs to fetch them for lunch, they were nearly two hours behind schedule and were mutually irate.  
  
But Hunter’s mood improved considerably when Sawyer presented them with a pizza heaped with caramelized onions, mushrooms, and pesto, still bubbling from the oven.  
  
“This is the best!” he said, two-thirds of the way through his first slice. There were three others already stacked on his plate. “I haven’t had pizza in forever!”  
  
“Well, a little bird helped me with the recipe,” Sawyer said, looking satisfied.  
  
Hunter was confused for a second, and then his face lit up with understanding. “Oh! Sparrow?”  
  
“None other. Though I don’t know if this one lives up to his version.”  
  
“No, this is really good! I tried following his pizza recipe once, a couple years ago. It took three days to clean out the oven completely.”  
  
Sawyer burst into laughter. “You know, I bet we could build an outdoor pizza oven somewhere. Using one really does make a difference.”  
  
“Wait, seriously? You’d want to do that? Oh, man, that’d actually be really cool.”  
  
Benjamin, meanwhile, quietly chewed one bite over and over until there was nothing left. He managed to finish half of a slice, and fed the other half to Mademoiselle under the table when Sawyer got up for a cup of coffee. He didn’t feel hungry, and he couldn't really taste the pizza.  
  
Hunter went back to the carpentry shop with a few leftover slices wrapped in waxed paper, all but whistling with renewed excitement.  
  
But the afternoon quickly fell into the same rut that’d plagued the morning. He wanted to make up for the time they’d already lost, but Sawyer kept trying to make casual conversation. Did Benjamin think they would finish the last chapter of _The Blacksmith’s_ _Apprentice_ that day? Maybe. When did Benjamin think it would start snowing this year? Was Hunter going to go to the Twilight Hayride with Annabelle? He answered a series of questions with curt, monosyllabic answers until he finally ran out of all patience and said, “Just be quiet for a while, would you?”  
  
His back was turned, and he did not see Sawyer’s reaction, but he did not ask any more questions after that.  
  
Benjamin’s neck and shoulders turned stiff and painful with tension as the afternoon trudged its way to evening. They were still working slowly, and the possibility of having to put one more day into the project filled him with an almost physical sense of urgency. And so, when he found a mistake in Sawyer’s work that would have to be redone, something inside him spilled over, and he found himself saying, without any forethought, “If you don’t know what you’re doing, just stay out of the way.”  
  
There was a long, heavy pause, and Benjamin clenched his teeth together. He didn’t look at Sawyer.  
  
Then Sawyer quietly unbuckled his tool belt, set it on the floor, and went downstairs. Benjamin pushed it into the corner with his foot and continued to work. A moment later, Sawyer reappeared with a glass of water. He handed it to Benjamin and left again without a word.  
  
The water was icy cold, and Benjamin’s head cleared a little. This clarity brought with it the awareness that some sort of uncomfortable conversation was looming ahead of him, so he drained the glass of water, set it on the window sill, and kept working. He kept working until there was absolutely nothing left to do.  
  
Sawyer hadn’t returned.  
  
For several minutes, Benjamin did nothing but stand in the middle of the finished room and stare at the wall. Then he packed up his toolbox and other supplies, picked up the discarded tool belt and empty glass, switched off the lights, and walked downstairs.  
  
Sawyer was standing in the kitchen, leaning his hip against the counter. He was winding a piece of twine into patterns between his fingers without looking at it. A glass of dark liquid sat beside him, beaded with condensation.  
  
Benjamin walked toward the front door, unbuckled his tool belt, and folded it up in the corner with all of the other construction supplies. He heard Mademoiselle barking at something outside; probably one of the raccoons that sometimes disturbed the compost heap. When he turned around, Sawyer was looking directly at him. Benjamin looked away.  
  
“Thanks for the water,” he said, hesitantly.  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
“You want to come see the upstairs? It’s all done.”  
  
“Sure. In a minute.”  
  
Sawyer picked up his glass and took a long, slow drink. He didn’t seem excited to go upstairs.  
  
Benjamin curled his fingers and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, feeling the calluses catch on one another. He thought about what to say.  
  
“Sorry for losin’ my temper. I didn’t, uh. Get much sleep.”  
  
“Sorry to hear that,” Sawyer said, neutrally. “Should I make coffee?”  
  
“No, that’s all right.”  
  
“Want more water?”  
  
Benjamin considered the glass he was still holding. The water had felt good. And he wanted things to seem normal, so he nodded and approached the kitchen. Sawyer reached out to take his glass. As Benjamin passed it to him, their fingertips touched, and he let go too soon. Sawyer had to dive to catch the glass. He laughed a little bit, in a strange way, as he straightened back up with the glass clutched in his hand. He turned away to add ice, then filled it with water. He pressed the glass very firmly back into Benjamin’s hand. Then he picked up his own glass and downed the remainder all at once. Now that he was closer, Benjamin could smell the potent kick of spiced rum. It probably wasn’t his first drink. He had the soft, murky expression he got when he’d been drinking for a while.  
  
Sawyer set his empty glass on the counter and drew himself back into the far corner of the kitchen. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  
  
“Can we talk?” he asked, like a kick in the gut.  
  
Benjamin paused with the rim of his glass touching his lips. He lowered it. “About what?”  
  
“I’m not saying you’re lying about being tired, but - uh - you wouldn’t look at me all day. You still won’t. Everything was fine yesterday—at least, I think so—so I have to assume this has to do with something about last night.”  
  
Benjamin didn’t answer. Fuck, he thought. Fuck, _fuck_.  
  
“I respect you very much,” Sawyer went on, looking down. “And I really value your friendship. I don’t want to jeopardize that.”  
  
“Thank you,” Benjamin said, his voice gone gruff with emotion. He set the still-full glass of water on the counter. This was worse than he could have imagined. Sawyer _knew_ somehow, and he’d done such a bad job owning up to it that Sawyer had been forced to broach the subject on his behalf. He was being delicate, but the message was clear: _don’t overstep your boundaries_. Benjamin’s throat was tight. “I—I’m sorry.”  
  
“Oh, well, that’s something; I’ve been met with worse.” Sawyer gave an odd, strained smile, and he made a motion as though to pick up his glass of rum; but, finding it empty, his hand just dropped limply to his side. “Look, I, I won’t bother you if I can help it, but we can’t completely avoid one another in a place like this. It's a small town. So I want you to know that I wouldn’t—that I won’t ever try to… take advantage of you, or, or do anything you don’t want. I—I was kind of caught up in the moment last night, but I wouldn’t have actually kissed you. I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable.”  
  
Benjamin’s entire brain stuttered. He felt strangely displaced, as though he’d blinked and found himself standing six inches from where he thought he was: just enough of a difference to be disorienting. He said, “…What?”  
  
“What?” Sawyer also said. “Um, I’m sorry—”  
  
“Take advant—? _Come here_.”  
  
Benjamin took a single, long step forward, grabbed Sawyer by the back of his head, and kissed him.  
  
There was a horrible, unending second during which Sawyer did not move or react at all, and Benjamin felt like he’d been plunged under cold water. He’d closed his eyes, and he couldn’t make himself open them. He was terrified. And then Sawyer’s mouth moved slightly, and he made a small and agonized sound. He pressed forward. The kiss immediately turned open-mouthed and wild. Sawyer put both hands on Benjamin’s neck. Benjamin put a hand around Sawyer’s waist. His nose bumped clumsily against Sawyer’s face. They stumbled against one another, then stumbled sideways into the cabinets. Benjamin’s hip banged against the countertop; Sawyer’s elbow hit his emptied glass. The glass slid an entire foot across the counter and tipped over into the sink with a _crack_.  
  
“Wait—wait—wait,” Sawyer gasped, twisting aside. “I’m going to throw up.”  
  
He turned away from Benjamin, leaned over the sink, and gave two huge, miserable coughs, but he didn’t bring anything up. Benjamin peered into the sink. Sawyer’s glass lay on its side with a single crack running through it from top to bottom, but it was still in one piece. He looked around and spotted his own glass of water, still untouched. He tapped Sawyer’s shoulder to get his attention and held out the glass when he turned. Sawyer gave him a slightly wobbly smile and swished a gulp of water through his mouth.  
  
“Thanks. That was not,” he said, “a reflection of the quality of the kiss.”  
  
“Oh, that… that's good. Are you sick?”  
  
“Not really. But I’ve been feeling sick to my stomach all afternoon because…” He gestured helplessly and drank another mouthful of water. His face was slightly pale; not as much as last night, but he looked strange and unwell. “I thought I’d really fucked up. I thought you were disgusted with me because I almost kissed you last night.”  
  
“You did?” Benjamin asked, stupidly. “I didn’t know. I mean, I know because… you… said…”  
  
He coughed, face hot, and forged on: “I thought you were apologizin’ because you knew that I wanted to k-kiss you and were tryin’ to let me down easy.”  
  
“I had absolutely no idea that the interest in kissing was mutual or I would have done something about it sooner.” Sawyer’s entire face was bright and dazzled; he’d started grinning, which made him look much more normal. “You sure didn’t give me any clues.”  
  
“It was kind of sudden,” Benjamin clarified. “I didn’t really realize it ‘til I was in bed last night.”  
  
Oh, no, that didn’t sound right. Sawyer grinned wider.  
  
“Do you want to do it again?”  
  
Benjamin’s face went even hotter. He coughed and looked back and forth at nothing in particular. “Well, ah…”  
  
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be pushy. It’s just, honestly, that felt great.”  
  
“Oh. It did?”  
  
“Yeah. I really, really wanted to do that.”  
  
Benjamin didn’t know what to say to that; so, true to form, he said nothing. He was intensely warm all over, and he couldn’t seem to put his thoughts into a coherent sequence. Every time he tried to to think ahead to the next step—there were steps, right, of things that were supposed to happen after you kissed someone?—his mind circled back to the feeling of Sawyer’s mouth, to the warm smell of rum on his breath. And so he just went on standing like that, utterly stupid and useless, until Sawyer gestured at the refrigerator.  
  
“Do you want something to drink? Water, beer?”  
  
Benjamin came back to himself with a physical jolt. He struggled to process the question. “Er, got more of that rum?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’ll have that.”  
  
“Ice?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
Sawyer drained the rest of the water that Benjamin had given him and took another glass out of the cupboard (“uh, sorry, I guess I’ll just keep this one”), then opened the freezer to tip ice cubes into each one. He filled both glasses with generous servings of spiced rum and handed one to Benjamin, who made sure to establish a very firm grip as it was passed to him. Sawyer delicately ‘clinked’ the bases of their glasses together. They both took very small sips, peering at one another over the rims of their glasses, and Benjamin suspected that they shared the same thought: _what do I say now?_  
  
Unsurprisingly, it was Sawyer who first found something completely typical to say: “Are you hungry?”  
  
Benjamin considered. He knew he should eat, but his stomach felt unsettled, and he could not imagine simply sitting at a table and having a normal meal. He shrugged, trying to seem indifferent. “I’m fine.”  
  
But Sawyer was already taking a pot out of the cupboards. “I’ll warm up some leftovers, if you want something later,” he said.  
  
He took a container from the fridge and emptied the contents—some kind of soup—into the pot and put it over low heat, covered by a lid. Benjamin just looked on, marveling that anyone could continue to do or think about practical things at a time like this.  
  
He drank the rum too quickly. It was hard to slow down: the drink gave him something simple to focus on and spared him from having to actually talk or do anything, so he just kept taking uncertain little sips. But it’d been several hours since he’d eaten, and the alcohol went straight to his head. By the time he’d emptied the glass, he was already beginning to feel hazy and warm: a heavy, drowsy warmth. Sawyer sipped his drink more gradually, leaning back against the counter.  
  
When he saw that Benjamin’s glass was empty, Sawyer refilled it, and Benjamin allowed it to happen. Sawyer splashed a bit more rum into his own glass, though it was still a third full. Things felt surprisingly normal, like any other drink they’d shared. The kitchen began to smell like soup.  
  
“Do you want to sit down?” Sawyer asked.  
  
“Mm,” he said, noncommittally. “Could I kiss you again?”  
  
He was satisfied to see that Sawyer was startled by the question: he jarred a little, making the rum slosh back and forth in his glass. Benjamin saw the distinct motion of his throat as he swallowed.  
  
“Y-yeah, I…”  
  
Sawyer started to set his glass down, thought twice, and instead drained the remainder in two gulps. He left the glass behind him as he swayed away from the counter and stepped forward. Benjamin put his glass down, too. He stayed rooted in place, but this time Sawyer was the one to close the distance between them. He cupped Benjamin’s jaw—lightly, warily—and leaned in to brush their mouths together. Benjamin inhaled through his nose, strangely affected by the hesitancy of the kiss. He couldn’t help himself: he put a hand on the small of Sawyer’s back to pull him closer and nudged his lips apart. Sawyer seemed to have only been waiting for a signal, because as soon as Benjamin coaxed his mouth open, he grabbed Benjamin’s shoulders and surged into the kiss.  
  
He’d forgotten what this was like: touching another person, being touched. Body heat. It felt good.    
  
“Hey,” Sawyer said some moments later, panting softly, “can I make a selfish request? You don’t have to agree, but can I take your shirt off?”  
  
Benjamin was absurdly caught off guard by this question, as though Sawyer had asked something truly unfathomable. “I, uh. Do you want to?”  
  
He immediately grimaced to himself, but Sawyer only grinned and said, “Definitely.”  
  
“Alright. You… okay.”  
  
“Okay,” Sawyer agreed, and then his hands were at the front of Benjamin’s shirt, undoing them with baffling ease and confidence. Benjamin just let it happen, feeling heavy and stupid and fascinated. Sawyer pushed his shirt off his shoulders and gathered it from his arms. Then he was touching Benjamin’s waist, pulling up his undershirt. Benjamin thought he’d feel cold, but no: he was warmer than ever, stifled by heat, breathing hard. Sawyer went to drape his clothes across the back of a chair, then turned back toward him.  
  
“You look really good,” he murmured, his gaze sliding once over Benjamin from bottom to top. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and tossed his head slightly, like he was trying to shake off a cobweb. “Kind of wish I hadn’t drank so much. It’s a little hard to concentrate.”  
  
Benjamin cleared his throat and said, “You, too.”  
  
Sawyer blinked at him, confused. Benjamin cleared his throat and tried again: “I mean, take your shirt off, too.”  
  
“Oh—right. Yeah.” Sawyer smiled like Benjamin had come up with a truly brilliant and novel ideal. His shirt didn’t have any buttons; he just snagged it and peeled it off over his head, all easy and casual. He let the shirt drop to the floor. Benjamin wasn’t seeing anything he hadn’t seen before, but he marveled at the fact that it was something that could happen upon request. It’d just been a matter of asking. Sawyer was breathing slow but hard, every expansion of his ribcage distinctly visible. He stood there, waiting for further direction; he was perfectly still except for his breathing, but he seemed to be thrumming with a kind of kinetic energy barely held in check. His stomach was pulled tight with tension.  
  
“Okay,” Benjamin said, trying to sound certain of himself, one hand half curled in a gesture of beckoning. “Come here.”  
  
Sawyer came to him. And if Benjamin thought he’d been overwhelmed before, then this was something else entirely. He’d been acutely aware of Sawyer’s hands earlier, but now he could _feel_ them directly: warm and slightly damp; a little rough, but cautious. Sawyer spread out a hand across his back, and he felt compelled to put his own hand against Sawyer’s ribs so he could feel them pushing against the skin as Sawyer drew in big, urgent breaths through his nose. His fingers brushed against a scar.  
  
All at once, the rum caught up with his legs, and the floor tipped him sideways. He stumbled off balance, and Sawyer tucked his whole arm against his back to steady him, saying, “Whoa, hey. You need to sit down?”  
  
Benjamin nodded vaguely, but when Sawyer steered him toward the table, he deliberately went past it and sat down, instead, on Sawyer’s bed. Sawyer laughed a little and said, “oh, alright,” and sat down there, too. His knee bumped into Benjamin’s.  
  
“You okay? Need to rest for a bit?”  
  
“No,” Benjamin said, though he wasn’t sure if it was true.  
  
“Oh, yeah? Well, whatever you say.” Sawyer smiled, then wet his lips. His eyes flickered up and down again. “Is it okay if I keep going? I’m not trying to push you, but, uh…”  
  
Sawyer trailed off, and his his hands, lying in his lap, flexed unwittingly.

Without any warning, an odd sense of unease came over him, like the flicker of displacement from earlier. He became conscious of what was happening; what he'd allowed to happen, what he'd _encouraged_ to happen. He'd known what he was doing, of course, but suddenly he saw it from a separate perspective, as though he were there beside himself, looking on. His heart stumbled and then began to pound so hard that his whole body shivered.  
  
But still he said, “Go ahead,” and Sawyer leaned forward to graze his lips against his neck. But as he leaned in, one of his hands fell to rest on the inside of Benjamin’s leg. He jumped—and, suddenly, everything in him went completely cold. The dual perspectives crashed together and merged into a leaden weight in his stomach. He looked at Sawyer and thought, _what am I doing?_  
  
“Wait,” he said, hoarse.  
  
Sawyer froze immediately. He leaned back to await an explanation; but, when none was forthcoming, he sat up fully and angled his body away. Benjamin expected him to say something—to ask ‘are you okay?’ or something to that effect—and his stomach knotted up in anticipation of having to explain himself, but Sawyer only looked at him wordlessly. But Benjamin could not speak, either, and the silence turned into something thick and stifling. Eventually, Sawyer rose to his feet.  
  
“Do you want your shirt?” he asked, gently.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Sawyer went to get his clothes from the chair. He held them out at arm’s length, then turned away and picked up his own shirt. He put it on, very slowly, with his back turned toward Benjamin: trying, Benjamin supposed, to give him a few precious seconds in which to collect himself. Benjamin was standing by the time Sawyer turned around.  
  
“Are you, uh. Do you want to stop for awhile?”  
  
Benjamin didn’t answer.  
  
Sawyer’s weight shifted slightly. The floorboards creaked under him. “Can I get you anything?”  
  
“Think I’ll go home,” Benjamin said. He looked away. He needed his tools. Where were they?  
  
For a moment he didn’t know where to look. It felt as though he’d never set foot in this house before. Nothing seemed familiar. He glanced around the room, but his eyes skimmed right over Sawyer each time they passed him, as though he were at a different level of focus than everything else in the room.  
  
His things were—ah, by the door, there. He made his way to the corner next to the door, and he put on his tool belt and picked up the other supplies, then took his jacket down from the hook beside the door. He didn’t put it on, though: too much of a hassle. He’d have to set down the toolbox first. Well, it wasn’t really that cold out, anyhow, and the walk wasn’t very long. He draped the jacket across the bend of his arm and opened the front door. Mademoiselle immediately burst past him and romped around the perimeter of the room. He patted the top of her head, absent-mindedly, when she circled back around to nose at his hand.  
  
“Good-night,” he said over his shoulder, not raising his eyes.  
  
Sawyer didn’t answer.  
  
Benjamin stepped outside and closed the door.  
  
Even without the jacket, he didn’t feel cold. The whole world was oddly muted. Instead of the usual sounds of running water and gravel crunching underfoot, he could only hear a dim buzzing sound, like radio static. He rubbed his ear against his shoulder, but the sound didn’t go away.  
  
He didn’t stop walking when he got to the carpentry shop. He walked past it, and past Wake’s abandoned house, and past the hotsprings, and past the woods. Beyond all those things, the beach shore was empty. But even here, Benjamin couldn’t hear the waves slapping against the sand. There was just more static. He made his way toward the pier, then changed his mind and sat, instead, on the sand above the tide line. The tide was starting to go out. There was a wide, dark stripe of still-damp sand between the water and the upper part of the beach, and Benjamin sat there with his toes against the edge of that stripe. The waves foamed their way over the damp band of the shore, but each one came short of reaching him.  
  
Gradually, the stripe of wet sand dried out and retreated farther and farther from where he was sitting, and the tide reached its lowest point. It’d already been fully dark when he’d arrived, but the darkness had deepened as he sat there, and he saw only indistinct smudges of form and movement where the moon’s hesitant light caught on shapes and surfaces. After a while he noticed that his teeth were clattering, and he thought, I should go. So he went. He stood up, and gathered his things, and began the walk back home.  
  
The upstairs lights were on when Benjamin reached the house. The ‘Closed’ sign was hanging in the window, but the door was still unlocked. Benjamin stepped inside and stopped there, letting his eyes adjust to the brightness. Then, from upstairs, he heard someone speaking: a voice that wasn’t Hunters.  
  
“I had no idea what to do!” Annabelle said, laughing. “There was flour _everywhere_ , Bloom was crying, and Mom was—”  
  
Benjamin turned in a circle and went back outside. He sat on the front step, where he’d hunched over a cooling cup of coffee that morning, and stared ahead at nothing. He’d had bad nights before, many of them, and on those nights he often found himself at the Maple Shrine. But he couldn’t go there tonight; not like this.  
  
He didn’t know how long he sat there, though he noticed his teeth were not longer chattering, before the door opened and someone stepped outside—only to gasp and leap sideways like a frightened rabbit.  
  
“Oh!” Annabelle gasped. “Ben—Mr. Benjamin! I didn’t know you were out here. Are you, umm—?”

She faltered, unsure, and swung her gaze around to the front door, which was still open.  
  
Benjamin stood. “Hello,” he said dully. He looked past Annabelle and saw Hunter standing just inside the house, his expression completely bewildered.  
  
“I’m goin' to sleep,” he continued. “Sorry for interruptin’.” He went through the door, took off his shoes, and set everything he was carrying in a heap against the wall. Hunter stepped aside to give him room, and he heard them whispering together behind his back in low, urgent tones.  
  
He did not look at them again as he made his way upstairs and into his bedroom, and there he lay down without undressing and fell into a blank and dreamless sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Benjamin hadn’t needed to set an alarm to wake himself up in the morning for the last thirty years of his life. He slept lightly and woke early by nature. But today, for the very first time, he was woken by Hunter knocking at his door.  
  
“Uncle Benjamin?” he called uncertainly. “Um, are you all right? It’s almost time to open.”  
  
Benjamin sat bolt upright—and experienced a rush of dizziness that almost tumbled him straight out of bed. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. His stomach was cramped with hunger.  
  
“Yeah,” he said—but the word came out as a faint croak, barely audible. He swallowed thickly a couple of times, coughed, and tried again. “Yeah, I’m— Could you watch the counter for half an hour?”  
  
“Okay,” Hunter called back, though he didn’t sound unconcerned.  
  
Benjamin stumbled his way through a clumsy imitation of his usual morning routine. He took a hasty, cold shower to wash off the grimy feeling left from sleeping in yesterday’s clothes, brushed his teeth, and managed to get dressed. He was shaky with fatigue, and he had to think very carefully about every small action he took. That was a good thing, in its own way: it saved him from being able to think about what had happened yesterday.  
  
He was just making his way downstairs when Hunter met him midway with a slightly frantic expression.  
  
“Oh, um, I was just coming up to let you know that Sawyer’s here.”  
  
Benjamin’s stomach plunged sickeningly, but he only nodded. They walked down the rest of the stairs together.  
  
Sawyer was standing off to one side of the shop. He was watching Boots, who had one back paw fanned out and was meticulously licking between each toe. He was smiling, but there was something about his posture that made him look defeated. He turned toward them when they reached the bottom of the stairs. There was a moment of stilted silence. Boots switched over to a different paw.  
  
“I’m gonna go work outside,” Hunter announced, a little too loudly. “See you later, Uncle Benjamin. Have a good day, Sawyer.”  
  
Sawyer pulled out one of his smiles as Hunter went past. “Thanks, Hunter. If you want to drop by the farm, I should be free in the evenings this week.”  
  
Hunter smiled in return, but he nearly leapt out the front door.  
  
“You left your book behind,” Sawyer said, raising the copy of _The Blacksmith’s Apprentice_ that’d been tucked under his arm. He held it up for a moment; then, when Benjamin made no move to take it, he set the book on the main counter and took a step away from it.  
  
Benjamin said, “Thank you.”  
  
There was another pause.  
  
“The house looks nice. You did a good job.”  
  
“The warranty is good for a year. Let me know if you find any problems.”  
  
Sawyer sighed, his shoulders dropping. His face went blank. Ah, Benjamin thought; now he actually looks his age. “Benjamin, we, uh. We have to talk about this.”  
  
Benjamin crossed his arms. “Don’t really feel like talkin’.”  
  
“Well, fuck, neither do I. But what’s the alternative? We pretend nothing happened for the next—how many years? We don’t talk to one another at all? We avoid one another? That’s not sustainable. Or healthy.”  
  
“What do you want me to say?” Benjamin growled.  
  
“Fucking… anything!” Sawyer slashed a hand through the air as though to cut through a swarm of possibilities filling the space between them. “I have no idea what to think right now. I just want to hear _something_ from you. Did I—was that too fast? Are you having some kind of sexuality crisis? Did you suddenly realize that you’re just not into me but are too shitty at communication to just tell me to my face?”  
  
“No,” Benjamin said, stiffly. “None of those.”  
  
“Well, then, what? Come on, give me a fucking clue.”  
  
“Where do you think this is headed, huh? You think we’re gonna… _date_ or somethin’? That don’t interest me. I don’t want to be your damn _boyfriend_.”  
  
It was an awful thing to say. Sawyer’s eyes and mouth flinched.  
  
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” he said quietly. “I haven’t suggested anything like that. I haven’t gotten to suggest anything _at all_ , because you won’t fucking talk to me. But it can be a casual thing, if that’s what you want.”  
  
“That’s _not_ what I want,” Benjamin spat.  
  
“Well, what is it that you want, then?” Sawyer asked, his voice starting to rise. “All you’ve told me so far are things you _don’t_ want. You don’t want to date, you don’t want to have casual sex; you just want to, what, work all the time and be alone? Is that what you enjoy?”  
  
Benjamin’s lip curled. “Do you want to give me some damn speech about how I should ‘move on?’ How my wife would want me to be happy without her?”  
  
Sawyer dropped his chin defensively. His expression settled. When he spoke again, his voice was lower and more level: “I didn’t know your wife; I wouldn’t presume to speak for her. And, look, I’m not saying that you can’t be happy with your current life, or that you’re not _already_ happy with the way things are. This isn’t a choice between happiness and unhappiness; I don’t want to frame it that way. It’s just a choice between having another relationship, or not having one.”  
  
“And what if I don’t want one?” Benjamin demanded.  
  
“Then—that’s fine. Okay? It’s, it’s fucking fine. I’m not going to force anything on you. But if you’re seriously so uncomfortable around me, I wish you’d tell me what I need to do to make things better. I want things to be better; that’s all. But you haven’t been direct about anything so far, and I still don’t understand what’s really going on.”  
  
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Benjamin said tightly. He unfolded his arms and made his way behind the main counter. “I have to get back to work.”  
  
Sawyer drew in a long, deep breath through his nose. He exhaled, slowly, through his mouth. He turned his face away.  
  
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll see you around.”  
  
He went to the door, and Benjamin did not try to stop him.  
  
Benjamin waited for five minutes—enough time, he hoped, to guarantee that Sawyer had moved on—and then he went outside, too. Hunter was at the lumber pile, splitting logs with a vengeance. He stopped when he saw Benjamin, and lowered the ax.  
  
“Hi,” he said, cautiously.  
  
“You want to work inside for a while?” Benjamin asked. “I’ll take over out here.”  
  
Hunter hesitated. He seemed to be working a response over in his mind; his jaw flexed in the tell-tale way it did when he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if he should. At last he said, “Okay. We can switch back whenever you want to.”  
  
Benjamin nodded and took the ax as it was passed to him. He waited until Hunter was inside the house, then lined up a new log and split it down the center. Then he split it into quarters.  
  
He worked steadily for a few minutes, letting himself simply drift with the rhythm of the familiar labor. It felt good to stretch out his arms and shoulders, and the shock that followed each ax blow broke up some of the tightness in his chest, bit by bit. And then something happened: his head went light, and everything canted from side to side. The ax fell through his suddenly nerveless hands on the downswing. Momentum carried it forward like a torpedo, and it cracked against the log he’d set up, sending it flying off the stump. The ax somersaulted after it and then lay heavily in the grass.  
  
Benjamin had to sit down. He lowered himself onto the stump he’d just been using to split logs and braced his forearms on his knees, panting. His hands had begun to shake, and he balled them up so that the quivering would be less pronounced.  
  
What kind of idiot was he? He’d barely eaten anything for a full day, his sleep routine was off, he was dehydrated, and the first thing he’d done was throw himself into manual labor?  
  
“Old fool,” he said out loud.  
  
He tried to stand, but his knees simply would not let him. He was considering how to proceed when he heard quick footsteps and turned to find Hunter half jogging toward him.  
  
“Breakfast,” Hunter said matter-of-factly, putting a glass of orange juice in front of his face. He had to take it with both hands to hold it steady enough to drink. It tasted immeasurably good. Hunter was also carrying a plate, which Benjamin found to have three or four fried eggs, a wedge of cheese, and a thick slice of bread. The bread was old—they hadn’t been keeping much food on hand while they’d worked on Sawyer’s house—but Hunter had compensated by toasting it and adding quite a lot of butter. Dashes of hot sauce lay in stripes over the eggs.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, too stunned for further commentary.  
  
As he ate with the plate balanced on his lap, Hunter gathered the logs he’d already broken down and brought them to the wood pile. He picked up the ax and leaned it against the opposite side of the stump, then sat down in the grass. He was quiet for a while, and then he said, “Will you please tell me what’s wrong?”  
  
Benjamin chewed and swallowed a piece of toast. “Nothin’s wrong.”  
  
Hunter said _urrhhhh_ and threw himself over backwards. He put his hands over his eyes. Then he sat up again.  
  
“Uncle Benjamin, I know you think I’m still a little kid, but you don’t have to hide everything from me. I notice stuff, you know? I can tell the difference between when you’re actually okay and when you’re just _pretending_ to be. I know about all the times you cleaned the house, and got food, and helped me with homework just so things would be normal for me, even though you didn’t want to do any of it. But it’s okay if I know about some problems; I _already_ know that there are problems. I just want you to be happy, okay?”  
  
Benjamin studied him for a moment. “I don’t think you’re still a kid,” he said.  
  
“Okay, well, thanks. Why won’t you tell me anything, then?”  
  
“You don’t need to worry about me.”  
  
“Well, I already do!” Hunter shouted. Then he sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. But not knowing what’s going on doesn’t make me worry any _less_ , Uncle Benjamin.”  
  
This statement carried a certain logic that Benjamin found frustrating because it ran contrary to what he wanted, which was not to talk about anything, ever, with anyone. He finished the last few mouthfuls of orange juice and set the glass down on the stump. “I know I don’t make things easy for you. I promise I’ll tell you if there’s anything you need to know.”  
  
Hunter looked at him sidelong, and Benjamin could almost hear the thought running through his mind: _how are you going to decide what I ‘need to know?’_ But Hunter seemed to know this was the best compromise he could expect, and he nodded slowly in agreement. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”  
  
“Mm. Thanks for bringin’ breakfast. It hit the spot.”  
  
“Oh. Yeah. You’re welcome. I shouldn’t have let you take my spot out here. You didn’t look very good this morning.”  
  
“I feel better now,” he said; and he meant it sincerely, even though he was still far from ‘normal.’ “You have a good time with Annabelle last night?”  
  
Hunter flushed and pulled up a handful of grass. “Y-yeah, it was nice. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to sneak her in while you weren’t here. I was just… Honestly, I was kind of mad after yesterday morning, you know? I just wanted someone to talk to, so I invited her over after work. We just ate pizza and talked for a while, that’s all. She wants to know how you’re doing, too.”  
  
“Ah. Well, please give her my apologies for scarin’ her last night.”  
  
Hunter laughed quietly and said, “Yeah, I’ll do that. Do you want to switch places now?”  
  
“Probably for the best,” Benjamin agreed. When he tried to stand this time, he managed to stay on his feet without any difficulty. He picked up the empty glass from the stump. “Remind me to take you out for a drink.”  
  
“Ha! I’ll hold you to that,” Hunter said. He’d already picked up the ax and was holding it with an easy familiarity. “I'll be here if you need anything.”  
  
“Okay,” Benjamin said, knowing that this was not the time to protest or claim that he didn’t need help. He made his way into the house, brought the used dishes into the kitchen—and then had to sit down and collect himself for a few more minutes. He didn’t feel _old_ , precisely, but he’d become disturbingly aware of his own limitations, like discovering that a dam was just one crack away from total collapse.  
  
But, all the same, there was nothing he could do but to keep going, so he picked himself up a few minutes later and went to find a project on which he could work.  
  
He did not leave the house again for two days after that. Regular business was slow, but he still found things to which to devote his attention: budget projections for the next year, and supply inventorying, and drafting patterns for rugs he could weave. Hunter went out to get their groceries, and Hunter worked at the front counter, and Hunter offered to lend his time to every project on which he found Benjamin working. He was bright and talkative during meals, and Benjamin did his best to reciprocate in kind. Things seemed good.  
  
But at the end of those two days, he felt no more certain or comfortable than he had at the start. He could not think about Sawyer without experiencing something like vertigo, like he was on the edge of something bottomless. But it was impossible not to think about him, either. His very absence—from conversation, from daily life—was so conspicuous that it drew one’s attention toward it: a noticeable void that pulled on anything that came too close, like a whirlpool. It was crushingly familiar, and resisting the pull took more than energy than he had to spare.  
  
And so, on the second day of his self-imposed exile, Benjamin opened the little box that he rarely touched and took out one of the gold wedding bands. He turned it around and around in his fingers, letting it grow warm from the contact.  
  
“Nadia,” he said, and for a while that was all he _could_ say.  
  
He let the ring rest in the middle of his palm and wrapped his fingers over it. “Nadia, what am I doin’? What am I supposed to do?”  
  
The ring had never given him an answer, not to any of the questions he’d had for the past ten years.  
  
But he could imagine, even so, how Nadia would look at him: head titled at a certain angle, mouth curving into the suggestion of a smile.  
  
“ _Well, you’ll never figure it out on your own_ ,” she’d say, laughing. “ _I’m afraid you’re actually going to have to_ talk _to someone_.”  
  
But that was just the problem: for years, _Nadia_ had been the person he’d gone to when he needed to talk about something. Without her, there was only one other person he could speak to about these things, and Seth already had the worries of the entire town to contend with. So Benjamin put off his decision for another day, until he discovered the conch shell from Sawyer holding down a stack of papers while he was looking for an old delivery slip. He had to put it up in the attic, and then he felt so absurd that he had to go splash his face with cold water.  
  
So, when his next day off came around, Benjamin set out early in the morning on his way to the Maple Shrine. He forged his way directly south, deciding to cut through the lightly forested area that bordered the northern edge of town. He didn’t care to meet anyone on the road. All of the deciduous trees were bare by now, and the leaf litter sighed beneath his feet, too damp and soft to crunch properly. The air was thick with the feeling of oncoming rain, full of moisture that took the edge off the seasonal cold but threatened to become precipitation. Though there was not much wind at ground-level, the cloud cover was moving swiftly overhead. The clouds sent down several frothy little tendrils, as though they longed to touch the ground, but the wind quickly tore them apart and sent them scattering.  
  
When Benjamin broke back out onto the main road, he was damp but more invigorated.  
  
The shrine was not much farther ahead, but Benjamin found himself slowing down until he was all but dragging his feet. Seth was open-minded and empathetic, but the very idea that someone else would know what had happened made it seem… more real, somehow. Frighteningly real.  
  
And so, instead of going directly to the shrine’s door, Benjamin wandered first into the small graveyard beyond it. He passed between the rows of headstones, touching some of them as he went. Most belonged to people he’d never known, people who’d lived and died before he’d even been born. Other markers were newer and more familiar. And there, at the edge of the graveyard, was the little plot of grass that he’d bought decades ago: a place where he would likely be buried alone one day. He could not guess whether Hunter would live out the rest of his life in Sugar Blossom, and his sister, fond though she was of the town, would certainly choose burial elsewhere. And there was nothing of Nadia here.  
  
It was hard, sometimes, not having a grave site for her. But Nadia had been clear and specific about everything she’d ever wanted right from their very first conversation, and when she had known she was going to die, she’d been adamant about her disinterest in coffins, and urns that could be set on the mantelpiece, and stone monuments. If someone wanted to think about her, she insisted, there were a dozen more appropriate places than some patch of grass in front of a carved piece of rock. But there were times when Benjamin felt a traitorous desire for something as fundamentally un-abstract as solid rock with a name on it. He looked for a moment at the empty plot at the edge of the cemetery, then turned away from it.  
  
Noah and Emma Hayseed’s graves had been decorated with loops of evergreen branches, still somewhat fresh and fragrant, bound together by lengths of ivy. Benjamin brushed a few dry seedpods off their headstones and gave them a little pat to say ‘hello.’  
  
“You’d be proud,” he said to Noah. “Your successor is every bit as surprisin’ as you were. You’d like him. Doesn’t seem fair that he’s only here because you’re not.”  
  
He remained there for a moment, resting his hand on the headstones with his thumb sliding back and forth, and then looked toward the shrine. A shadow was passing in front of the windows: likely Seth tidying up and getting ready for the day. Benjamin sighed, gathered himself together, and made his way to shrine’s front door.  
  
Seth was at the far end of the room, trimming the wicks of the prayer candles that hadn’t been lit. Hearing the door open and shut, he turned around with a warm smile.  
  
“Good morning, Benjamin,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise. I rarely see you here during the day.”  
  
“Ha,” Benjamin answered with a slight wince. It was true: he almost never visited the shrine for normal services or during regular hours. It was hard to be at the shrine during the day, for here had been the site of two of the most significant days of his life: his wedding, and Nadia’s funeral. He could barely remember the funeral—nor the days, weeks, months that had followed it—but being in the shrine triggered flashes of individual, disconnected details that piled disorientingly upon one another. The flowers at the wedding, the flowers at the funeral; the sound of someone sniffing back tears; Nadia smiling at him from the end of the aisle; Nadia smiling out of framed photographs because she was dead, she was dead, she was dead.  
  
Benjamin dropped his eyes to the floor. “I haven’t come as often as I should,” he admitted, “but I’m grateful to be here, if you’ll have me.”  
  
“Of course,” Seth replied without hesitation. “You know you’re welcome here any time, no matter when. I can leave you in peace, if you’d like to have some privacy.”  
  
“No, I… I was actually hopin’ to talk to you. For advice. I…” And here he had to pause, struggling to say the thing out loud.  
  
“Perhaps you’d like to sit down?” Seth suggested gently. “Would you like to go to my office?”  
  
“No, no. Thank you. It’s fine out here.” Sitting sounded like a good idea, though, so Benjamin made his way down half the length of the aisle and chose a seat. Seth came to take a spot beside him. The shrine was warm, and smelled like candle smoke and juniper.  
  
“I kissed Sawyer a few days ago,” he said, plunging right into the matter. There was no more delicate way of putting it. He looked sideways at Seth without turning his head.  
  
No one was better at masking surprise than Seth. His expression did not reflect any shock or disapproval, but Benjamin could detect a hint of concern. “And you need advice because you regret doing that?”  
  
“Yes,” he said, but there was a strange, unintentional waver in his voice.  
  
“I see. And does Sawyer also regret what happened?”  
  
Benjamin laughed shortly and drug a hand across his mouth. “Probably, considerin’ I walked out on him afterward.”  
  
“Ah. Do you regret walking away, or that the kiss happened in the first place?”  
  
“I don’t know, I— Both, I guess? I shouldn’t have done it, but I know that I… that I didn’t do right by Sawyer, leavin’ like that.”  
  
“And why do you think you shouldn’t have done it?”  
  
Benjamin frowned, caught off guard. Wasn’t that self-explanatory? “Because,” he started to say—and then had to stop again to turn the answer around in his mind. He could feel it in the back of my mind—an unyielding spot of clarity and conviction—but it was strangely difficult to put into words, like something that was too bright to look at directly. He could only approach it in a roundabout way.  
  
“I was serious about my wedding vows,” he said at last, speaking down to the floor. “I thought I’d be married ‘til death, but I always assumed—I thought it would be my death, not hers. I don’t really feel too lonely on most days anymore, not with Hunter around. But sometimes it’s like I, I’m at the bottom of a pit that’s bein' filled in. And I didn’t think anyone could ever replace Nadia, but I—”  
  
He bit off the end of his sentence and sucked in an uneasy breath. He’d wandered perilously close to dangerous territory, places where he did not want to tread. ‘But?’ But _what_? Having stopped, however, it was difficult to begin again. He tapped his heel against the floor and wound his hands together, pressing on his own fingers until one of his knuckles popped. Seth waited for another moment to see if he would continue, and then spoke up cautiously: “May I ask a clarifying question?”  
  
He waited for Benjamin’s nod, then went on: “You said ‘replace.’ Do you truly think that could happen?”  
  
“No,” he said immediately, relieved that he’d been asked a question that was so easy to answer. “No, no, never.”  
  
“If you don’t think Nadia can be replaced, then what is it that concerns you?”  
  
Benjamin spread out both of his hands, palms up, and stared at the lines and calluses and scars that represented the sum of his entire life. “I haven’t worn my wedding ring for ten years,” he began, haltingly. “There used to be a spot on my finger that was paler than all the rest. But even that’s gone. I haven’t got anythin’ left. But I… I still feel like a married man. Even though Nadia isn’t here, she’s still my wife. Isn’t she? I don’t… How can I even think about anyone else?”  
  
Seth let out a long, slow breath: something that was not quite a sigh. “Would you like to go outside? I think it might be nice to walk around a little while we talk.”  
  
Benjamin agreed out of habit, and they made their way outside. Time seemed to stutter around them. He experienced the movement in a series of chronological flashes: he was standing; he was at the door of the shrine; they were outside on the path. The heavy sensation of impending rain had intensified, but Seth seemed entirely unconcerned about the possibility of a downpour as they passed side-by-side up the road, unhurriedly. Benjamin did not know what to say next; it’d exhausted him just to get out those few sentences, but Seth mercifully broke the silence.  
  
“You’ve experienced an unimaginably difficult loss, and everyone responds to loss in different ways. It is not my intention to critique the ways in which you have coped, or to suggest that your feelings are _incorrect_ in any way. But based on what you’ve just told me, it sounds like you are experiencing guilt and regret because you have conflated your sense of loyalty with your feelings of grief. Does that make sense?”  
  
“No,” Benjamin said.  
  
Seth gave a small laugh and shook his head as though to say _fair enough_. “Let me try again, then. You’ve expressed that loyalty is important to you, and you have strong feelings of loyalty toward Nadia in particular. That’s an admirable trait, and a fundamental part of marriage. It’s easy to know how to be faithful to someone in life, but what about in death? Can you still practice faithfulness the same way? That’s hard to know, isn’t it?  
  
“Right now, as I see it, you believe that being faithful means devoting yourself exclusively to one person—your wife—and, therefore, your ongoing grief and loneliness are the proof of your faithfulness. You’ve had to give up the physical symbols of your marriage—like your ring—so you’re protective of it’s _emotional_ remnants. When something happens that makes you feel less alone and less full of grief, you fear that means are being disloyal. But there is more than one way to be loyal to someone.”  
  
“How?” Benjamin rasped. A single word was all he could manage; it took all his strength just to get it out.  
  
“Well, by honoring and pursuing the things that person considered important, for example. Imagine a person who loves to paint. Someone who cares about that person might decide to dedicate a gallery in their name, or sponsor a young artist, or even learn how to paint, too. Nadia cared about preserving this town; she cared about treating people and the world we share with compassion and respect. Looking after Hunter as you’ve done these many years is a wonderful example of something she would consider important, don’t you think? There are many ways of keeping people close to our hearts without turning ourselves into mausoleums.”  
  
Benjamin stopped walking. Seth continued onward for another few steps before he realized that Benjamin was not going to follow him any farther. He turned around, but did not try to close the distance between them.  
  
They’d been heading north, in the general direction of the farm owned by Violet and her family. The sides of the road were hemmed in by fences, and the air smelled like tilled soil. Benjamin looked up at the clouds, still moving fast across the sky. “That’s quite a theory, Abbot.”  
  
Seth shifted his arms, folding them behind his back. “I’m not sure if I’ve offered the kind of advice you were seeking, or hoping to hear.”  
  
“Well, I don’t suppose it’s your responsibility to tell people what they _want_ to hear, huh?”  
  
“Nevertheless, you have my utmost support for any choice you make. I only only hope to offer you a lens through with you might examine your thoughts so that you can reach your own conclusions. But no one else can make your choices for you.”  
  
“S’ppose not,” he muttered. “But I, I think I understand some of what you’re sayin’. I… guess I have some thinkin’ to do. Thank you for your help, Abbot. You’re better to me than I deserve.”  
  
“Benjamin,” Seth began earnestly, “you deserve no less than anyone else. Everyone is entitled to compassion and sensitivity. Please know that no matter what challenges you face, you don’t have to endure them alone. You’re part of an entire community of good people who care about one another. Your well-being is important, and any one of us would gladly offer whatever assistance we can.”  
  
“Thank you, Abbot,” he said again, though it was hard to get the words out clearly. He swallowed. “Do you mind if I stay at the shrine for a bit longer? Could I light a candle?”  
  
Seth, of course, did not mind, and by the time Benjamin finally left the shrine to return home, the rain had made good on its threats. It came down with a steady murmur, as though it wanted to contribute some thoughts of its own. He decided to walk through the woods on his way back, too, though this time it was with the hope that the tree cover, however minimal, would shield him from some of the rain.  
  
His success was limited. The trees did block some of the rain, bare though many of them were, but whatever shelter they provided was counteracted by the thick undergrowth of bushes, shrubs, and saplings that brushed wetly against him as he forged a path through the woods. Well, shouldn’t he have known better? He’d lived here all these years, and he still thought he could hide from the rain in these woods? Huh! His head really wasn’t working right anymore.  
  
Midway through his journey, a little flurry of motion, close to the ground, made Benjamin pause. He wiped a hand across his eyes to clear the water from them and looked hard at the spot where he’d seen something moving. There it was again: a darting, flapping sort of motion. Something small. Benjamin squatted down on his heels, unsure of what compelled him to look closer. Of course things moved around in the woods. Hadn’t he ever heard of squirrels before?  
  
But this was—there! It was a little speckled brown bird, running along the ground with a wing dragging behind it. Some birds faked injuries to lure predators away from their nests, but this was the wrong season for those tactics. There were no eggs or ugly, helpless hatchlings to protect this late in the year. And some of the bird’s pinion feathers were plainly bent askew. Not a fake injury.  
  
Benjamin gnawed at his lip as he crouched there. The bird was not far away, maybe three or four yards, moving parallel to his own path in quick little bursts of a few steps each. Despite their closeness, it did not seem to have noticed him. But there was a large bush, still in full leaf, directly in the bird’s path. If it got under the bush, he would lose it, and then it would either starve or get picked off by some predator. Trying to catch the bird would be damn stupid—and, anyway, predators needed to eat, too—but hadn’t be made a habit of doing stupid things lately?  
  
Both he and the bird walked forward a few more steps, and Benjamin closed some of the distance between them. He managed to line himself up behind the bird. It would still be able to see him if he got close enough, but he might buy a second or two of valuable time before it realized what was happening. And the rain was working to his advantage, creating a constant patter of white noise that obscured the sound of his own foot steps. As he crept closer, he started to unbutton his shirt. He doubted he could catch the bird by hand—at least, not without risk of hurting it—so he would have to try to throw something over top of it, and his shirt was all he had. But he’d just gotten to the last button when the bird suddenly realized he was there. It lowered itself slightly, hesitated for half a second, then made a break straight for the bush ahead of it.  
  
Benjamin dove for it. He landed on his knees, skidding on the wet leaf litter, and managed, by some miracle, to put his hand around the bird. But the little thing was more fluff than actual substance, and it squeezed its tiny body right between his fingers, peeping in alarm, and flitted underneath the bush.  
  
Benjamin hissed “ _shit_ ” and lowered himself onto his hands until he could see beneath the bush. The bird was only a little more than an arm’s length away. The bush had grown up around a little outcropping of rock that created a sort of wall between one side of the bush and the other. The bird had reached the rock and stopped there, unable to progress any farther. It was reachable, if he stretched for it. Benjamin extended an his arm—then hastily withdrew it, wincing. The bush was full of thorns, because _of course it was._  
  
But now that he’d allowed himself to become concerned about the bird’s well-being, he felt unable to just abandon it. So he lowered himself flat onto the ground to give the bush as much clearance as possible and scooted forward. The thorns scratched lightly against the back of his head as moved along, but his arm could pass unscathed along the ground. Unfortunately, the bird bounced a few steps sideways before he could make another grab for it, and he was forced to crawl farther under the bush until his shoulders and half of his back were swallowed up. It was at this point that Benjamin encountered real trouble. He tried to move forward the last few necessary inches and found that he could not. He tried to move backwards and could not. The thorns had caught his shirt. He worked an arm behind his own back to free himself, but the thorns chewed into his fingers so viciously that he had to give up.  
  
“Fuck,” he said.  
  
The bird apparently disapproved of this vulgar language. It moved farther away until it was at the very edge of the bush: a spot that would be easily reachable by anyone who was not _trapped inside a bush._  
  
Benjamin groaned and put his face directly onto the ground.  
  
It was tempting to just give up and lie there forever. The rain pattered softly against the surrounding leaves; it was calm and pleasant, in a way. But he had to get up, so he did. He flattened himself as much as possible, clenched his teeth, and began the arduous process of squirming out from under the bush. He gained some ground, but his shirt did not. The thorns held it tightly, and he felt it dragging up his torso until it was bunched under his arms. There was nothing he could do but stretch himself out so the shirt could slide over his head and arms until, at last, he was able to clear the bush, reduced to only his undershirt. He sat up.  
  
He shuffled backwards on his knees until there was a very safe distance between himself and the bush, then crouched down once again so he could peer underneath. The bird had moved back toward the center and was huddled against the rock outcropping. It was puffed up to the greatest volume it could manage and was eying him disdainfully.  
  
“Now we’re both unhappy,” he told it.  
  
The bird did not seem sympathetic. It turned its head and studied him with one eye.  
  
His shirt hung sadly from the bottom of the bush, dirty and ragged. Benjamin made a half-hearted attempt to untangle it, but he only got a few more good pokes for his trouble. His hands and back stung; he was soaked through and covered in mud.  
  
“You win,” he said. “I concede. Happy now?”  
  
The bird had nothing to say, and neither did whatever fickle force controlled his life.  
  
Benjamin got to his feet and continued to walk. He looked once over his shoulder as he went.  
  
As his luck would have it, there was someone on the road when Benjamin at last emerged from the woods. Senah was making her way along with an umbrella balanced against her shoulder when Benjamin suddenly appeared in front of her in a partial state of undress. There was a twig in his hair. She stopped walking when she saw him. Benjamin stopped walking, too. They faced off in the middle of the road. Senah looked him over, her lips slightly pursed as she tried to decide whether this situation was normal.  
  
“Hello, Benjamin,” she said at last. “Everything all right?”  
  
“Hello, Senah,” he replied. “Everythin’s fine.”  
  
“Well, that’s good.” She reached into the satchel hanging under her arm and produced a battered off-white envelope. “Got a letter for you.”  
  
She held it out. Benjamin stepped forward to take it.  
  
“Thank you, Senah. Have a nice day.”  
  
“You, too, Benjamin.”  
  
And she stepped around him and continued on her way.  
  
The envelope did not have a return address, but it did have an astonishing number of stamps. There was nowhere Benjamin could put the letter where it would not get wet, so he immediately split the seal as he walked the rest of the way toward the carpentry shop. The letter was hand written on a tri-folded piece of parchment, and it announced, in an elegant and flowing script that rather belied the man who had written it, that Wake and his daughter would soon be moving back to town.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sorry for lying about when this would be done)

Benjamin woke up the next morning with his forehead noticeably warm to the touch, and spent three more days ruefully holed up in the house, sneezing every forty-five seconds with clock-like predictability. He wasn't sick enough to warrant a doctor's visit, but neither could he work on anything reliably. So he slept a lot: a rare luxury, though not one that he very much enjoyed. His over-heated brain was full of dreams that he couldn't remember when he woke, and he bumbled through his waking hours feeling that there was something important just out of reach, like having a word constantly on the tip of his tongue. But while Hunter went to the Twilight Hayride one evening, Benjamin slept for an unprecedented fourteen-hour stretch, after which he began to feel more like himself again. Two days later, Wake and River arrived. They called the carpentry shop from the town hall, and Benjamin was waiting for them when they arrived home early that afternoon. As soon as they were within reach of one another, Wake threw down his travel bag and pulled Benjamin into a rib-crushing, back-slapping hug. Wake had gone grey as a young man, but he seemed to be otherwise ageless: he scarcely looked any different than the day he'd first come to town, and only his uncut hair showed how long he’d been away.  
  
“Hello, Mr. Benjamin,” River said, giving him a little wave from behind her adopted father’s back.  
  
“Hello, River,” he replied, though Wake had pinned his arms to his sides and he could not wave back. “You’ve gotten tall.”  
  
At last Wake broke the embrace and held him out at arm’s length, grinning hugely.  
  
“It’s mighty good to see you again, you old dog. And a hearty thanks for agreein’ to meet us here.”  
  
“Who’re you callin’ old?” Benjamin laughed, clapping Wake’s shoulder and giving him a rough shake. His whole body felt like a bundle of tough wire. They beamed at one another. “And it’s no trouble at all. You’ve got the key?”  
  
“Aye.”  
  
The front door squealed as it was opened. It was cold inside, and smelled like dampness and salt, but the electricity worked. River also confirmed that the plumbing was still running, though the tap gave a miserable gurgle and simply sputtered for five seconds or so before the water began to flow freely. Benjamin had made a habit of walking by after heavy weather to make sure that no windows had been broken or any roofing torn off by wind, but he hadn’t actually set foot inside the building since its abandonment. There were only two keys available, and the second copy had been left with Mayor Barley. Wake and River had taken the other key with them as a promise that they would one day return.  
  
They spent an hour or so going through the house from top to bottom, searching for any damage or defects. They tested all of the light switches and outlets, turned on the appliances and faucets, opened up the heat vents, and checked inside the cupboards and cabinets.  
  
Benjamin pried up a couple of the floorboards, too, and opened the attic space for examination. A mouse had gotten into the the roof insulation but died before it could do substantial damage. River wrapped the tiny, stiff body in a handkerchief and brought it outside for a solemn burial near the house. Overall, the house had remained in generally livable condition, though some of the floorboards had been warped by moisture that had gotten in under the foundation, and a patch of mold had begun to creep up the nearest wall. Benjamin took some measurements and made some notes, and they arranged to begin repairs the following day.  
  
Wake and River had a little packet of sandwiches with them, and after the house had been inspected they sat down and shared a modest mid-afternoon lunch with Benjamin. Then he helped them unpack their bags (easy enough; they’d traveled lightly) and to begin cleaning and tidying the house (more challenging; a house could accumulate a lot of dust in two years, even empty). Soon it was evening, and they had no more patience for dust.  
  
As he washed and dried his hands at the kitchen sink, Benjamin said, “Me’n Hunter will start at eight in the mornin', if that's all right with you. Shouldn't be more'n a few days to finish.”  
  
“We’re obliged to you,” Wake answered. “Normally, I’d offer to pour you a drink, but I’m afraid we’re short on provisions just now.”  
  
“Let me buy you dinner in town,” Benjamin offered. “You’ve had a long day already.”  
  
Wake hesitated, reluctant to accept further hospitality, but River clapped her hands together and piped up to say, “Okay! Let’s go!”  
  
The two of them took a bit of time to change out of their travel-rumpled clothes and refresh themselves before they all set out together. But when they got to the carpentry shop, Hunter had to bashfully decline their invitation to join: “I’d love to go, but I’ve actually been invited to have dinner with Annabelle’s family tonight.”  
  
This encounter provided a rich source of intrigue for River during the rest of their walk into town. “Have any _babies_ been born?” she wanted to know. Had anyone gotten married? Was Annabelle Hunter’s girlfriend now? Did anyone _else_ have a boyfriend or girlfriend? Unfortunately, she found Benjamin’s answers— _no; no; maybe; I don’t know_ —extremely unsatisfying, and resolved to find someone who could give her a more enriching update about the current state of affairs in Sugar Blossom.  
  
And then, just as they reached the Midnight Tavern, the door opened in front of them and Sawyer stepped outside.  
  
Benjamin stopped in his tracks. Sawyer also stopped, and looked him full in the face without any change of expression. Then his gaze slid away, and he saw Wake and River standing there in the road, too. He gave them a big smile and greeted them with a tip of his head, then said “excuse me” as he stepped out of their way. Then he continued off down the street and turned the corner. Benjamin felt winded.  
  
“That’s the man we dreamed about,” River whispered urgently.  
  
Wake, with a slightly embarrassed expression, said, “I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” and ushered them the rest of the way into the tavern. But before Benjamin had a chance to ask how he _would_ put it, they were immediately swept up in a series of social exchanges. The tavern was surprisingly busy for the early hour, and although everyone in town had seen Wake and River that very same morning, their presence was still an exciting novelty. Indigo lingered at their table to talk after he’d brought glasses of water, and Logan came over to say hello, and so did Alexander, and Sparrow stopped on his way out to invite River to visit the bakery because Siloh wanted to catch up with her. By the time Wake and River were given a few minutes of uninterrupted peace, their food had already been served: pan-fried fish the tavern was running as an impromptu special.  
  
“What’s the farmer like?” River asked as they finally settled into the meal. She had one elbow on the table. “Is he nice? Are you friends?”  
  
“He seems to get along well enough with everyone,” Benjamin said, vaguely. “You said you had a dream about him?”  
  
“Yes! That’s why we came home. You can tell the story, Papa,” River offered, the very picture of generosity.  
  
Wake did not look overjoyed to have been given this honor, but he patted River’s hand, cleared his throat, and began speaking, all the same: “We’ve each of us missed Sugar Blossom somethin’ fierce, but there’s a reason we decided to return. One night, we—both of us—had the same dream. We were in a place we didn’t recognize, but it seemed familiar. It felt like home. It was a beautiful place, and we were approached by a wild animal, which began to speak to us.”  
  
“It was a rabbit,” River interjected.  
  
“Aye. We could tell there was somethin’ special about it.”  
  
“Aside from the fact it could talk?” Benjamin asked.  
  
Wake gave him a dry look. River said, “It was a Feral Shade.”  
  
Wake waited moment to see if anyone else had further questions or contributions to the conversation, then determinedly forged on with the story: “The creature—the Feral Shade—spoke to us to say that things were improvin’. That the problems that had driven us away were bein’ healed. It said that safe harbor was available again. It had an indirect way of talkin’: it didn’t mention any people or places by name, but we knew it meant that Sugar Blossom was changin’. That someone was _makin_ ’ it change. Someone trusted by the Feral Shades.”  
  
“That’s Sawyer,” River said eagerly. “We could tell when we saw him this morning.”  
  
“But you didn’t see him in the dream? He wasn’t actually part of it?” Benjamin asked.  
  
River and Wake shook their heads.  
  
“Well, he’s the only new person to move to town since you left,” Benjamin pointed out. “It’s normal that he’d stand out compared to everyone else.”  
  
“No, that’s not why!” River huffed. “We recognized him because he made us feel the same way we felt in the dream.”  
  
“It’s hard to explain,” Wake said. “But I agree with River. He had that same familiar feelin’.”  
  
“Maybe he was familiar,” Benjamin said. “He used to travel quite a bit, I understand. Maybe you met him somewhere before now.”  
  
River leveled a profoundly disappointed look at him while she chewed a mouthful of fish. Wake’s expression was more mild and searching. “I don’t remember you bein’ such a skeptical man, Benjamin,” he said.  
  
Benjamin dipped his head, laughing and shrugging a little at the same time. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to spoil the story. Seein’ the Feral Shades is supposed to be a good thing, right? And now you’re here, which is the best thing I can think of. You might try talkin' to Seth, though. Or Fable. She knows all the stories better than anyone, I think. Or Paxel, if you can can him.”  
  
“You don’t have any opinions of your own?” Wake pressed. “You’ve been part of this town much longer than we have. What do you think of the Shades?”  
  
“I think that I’ve never seen one,” Benjamin said, shrugging again. “But I don’t suppose I’m the sort of person they would appear to.”  
  
Wake and River looked at one another. Then River reached out and reassuringly patted his shoulder.  
  
“You can ask Sawyer if you want to see one,” she said. “Since he’s their friend.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Benjamin said, gravely.  
  
The conversation turned away from the Feral Shades and Sawyer after that point, and for awhile they spoke of people and places that had nothing to do with Sugar Blossom. Wake had a certain talent for finding the most interesting situation in any given hundred-mile radius, and River was an adventurous girl; in the time they’d been away, they had done and seen more than most people did in a lifetime. They told Benjamin all of their funniest stories, and all three of them laughed until their sides hurt; but there was, nevertheless, a strange undertone of sadness and displacement to each story. All of the experiences they’d enjoyed didn’t change the fact that they’d simply been… drifting. Unanchored. Adventure was all well and good, but that wasn’t what they’d set out to find. They'd only really wanted to be home.  
  
Well, if they needed the encouragement of the Feral Shades to bring them back, then so be it. Benjamin could do his best to have more faith.  
  
Eventually, Wake leaned back in his chair and asked, “Can I at least buy you a drink to make up for dinner?”  
  
Benjamin considered. “Only if you’re plannin’ to have one, too,” he countered.  
  
“I would ask no man to drink by himself,” Wake answered with a big, uneven smile. “Is Orion still brewin’ that beer you like?”  
  
“Actually, if you’re goin’ to have somethin’ with rum, I’ll have the same.”  
  
“Oh?” Wake’s eyebrows went up. “After all the effort I spent tryin’ to give you a taste for it, you only come to your senses while I’m away? Well, it’s true that things really have changed here, then.”  
  
“One or two things, maybe,” Benjamin agreed, and laughed.  
  
They rounded out their order with a milkshake for River, but by the time they’d all finished their drinks, she was nearly asleep at the table. She and Wake had been traveling since well before sunrise, and the exhaustion of the whole day had finally caught up with her. She was much quieter on the walk home than she’d been on their way to the tavern. Benjamin walked them all the way to their front door and bid Wake good-night with a quick clasp of their hands before doubling back down the road to return home.  
  
As he walked, the thought suddenly came to him that if he just kept following the road, he would end up at Sawyer’s house. It would be easy. A straight shot. There was nothing stopping him.  
  
…Except for the uncertainty of what to do when he got there. His imagination could not get past Sawyer’s front door. So he went home, as he was supposed to do, and started measuring out the new floorboards.

 

* * *

  
  
The work on Wake's home kept him occupied for awhile. He and Hunter repaired the rotten wallboard, and replaced some of the old insulation, and put in new sections of flooring. He enjoyed himself. There was a particular satisfaction to restoring something and making it good and new again. They talked a lot, all four of them. River and Wake were insatiably curious about everything that had happened while they were away, and they seemed to consider all the ordinary goings-on of Sugar Blossom every bit as interesting as all the wonders of the big wide world. They asked endless questions, and Benjamin was surprised by how much he _could_ say about everything when pressed for details. He talked so much during the first day that his voice gave out, and River doctored him with a big mug of herbal tea dosed with honey and lemon—and a generous dash of rum, courtesy of Wake.  
  
But when he returned home in the evenings, everything was disconcertingly quiet. Hunter had begun spending more of his free time with Annabelle, leaving Benjamin with the house to himself. Not so long ago, he would have welcomed the rare solitude. But he’d become accustomed to distractions, to activity, to conversation. He did some reading, and caught up on work that'd been neglected while he was sick, but the long stretches of uninterrupted quiet gave him more time alone with his own thoughts than he really cared to have.  
  
This is what life could have been like, Benjamin thought one evening as he sat at his workbench. Working all day, then just working on something else for the rest of the night. No one to distract him, no one to talk to, and the house all quiet and motionless, filled up with absences.  
  
Then came a clarifying thought: he wouldn’t have survived. He wouldn’t have survived living on his own like this.  
  
Benjamin blinked several times, then closed and latched the wooden box sitting in front of him and bound it up with a length of twine. No sense dwelling on might-have-beens: he _hadn’t_ lived alone, and he _had_ survived. And here he was, as alive and foolish as ever. His back creaked, then gave a decisive _crack_ as he stretched his arms over his head. Then he stood, grabbed the jacket he’d left draped across the adjoining table, and shrugged it on. One side was lightly weighed down with a book tucked into the pocket.  
  
“I’m countin’ on you to look after the place, Boots,” he told the cat, who had been asleep, wedged onto the seat directly behind him, for the past hour. The tip of her tail curled into a loop, which Benjamin took as sign of understanding and acceptance.  
  
He locked the door behind him before he set off down the road, the box tucked under his arm. He’d likely have another hour or two before Hunter got home that night—though he probably wouldn’t be given the chance to take up that much time.  
  
Mademoiselle was standing sentry on the far side of the bridge connecting the main road to the southeastern corner of Sawyer’s property. She didn’t cross the bridge to meet him, but her tail began to whisk rapidly back and forth as Benjamin made his way over. When he finally reached her, she bounced straight into the air and yipped eagerly. Sawyer’s cat, the little white former stray, was outside, too, hunkered on one the barnyard’s fence posts. She sat up straight and uttered a trilling little _mii_! as he started to walk past the barn. Benjamin, not wanting to be impolite, detoured over to scratch her under the chin, at which point a gaggle of chickens and cows lumbered up to the other side of the fence and began to investigate him. Soon Benjamin was the center of attention of the entire barnyard: Mademoiselle trotting from side to side and giving excited little barks, and the cat purring, and the chickens gently chortling to themselves while the cows uttered plaintive moos, requesting ears of corn or head scratches. It was all very boisterous. Benjamin made helpless little shushing motions at them, but to no avail.  
  
So much for the element of surprise.  
  
Sure enough, the farmhouse door opened a moment later, and Sawyer leaned his upper body into the open. He was back-lit by the house lights, and his breath steamed as it hit the cooler air. Mademoiselle went bounding off toward him.  
  
Benjamin dropped his outstretched arm to his side just as a cow began to chew on his sleeve.  
  
“Evenin’,” he said.  
  
“Hi,” Sawyer said.  
  
“Sorry for the ruckus. Didn’t mean to get everyone all riled up.”  
  
“It’s fine. Do you need something?”  
  
Benjamin’s throat tightened. “I, ah.” He looked at the cows, at the box under his arm, at the ground. “I’m a damn idiot, but I was hopin’ we could talk. If you’ve got a minute.”  
  
Sawyer didn’t respond for several agonizing seconds; then he said, “I suppose I do,” and stepped sideways, opening the door wide. Mademoiselle tried to squeeze her way into the house, but Sawyer put out a leg to stop her. “Sorry, girl, not yet.”  
  
Mademoiselle sat down, and as Benjamin approached the house and was allowed to enter, she focused the full force of her affront at him through her eyes. Benjamin offered her an apologetic wince and shrug.  
  
Sawyer closed the door and stepped aside, folding his arms.  
  
The house looked just the same as the last time Benjamin had seen it. Sawyer had not taken any of his furniture upstairs.  
  
Sawyer looked just the same, too: not exactly angry, but not smiling. Benjamin didn’t feel confident enough to approach him directly, so he went to the dining table and put the box there. Then he backed several steps away.  
  
“I wanted to give you this,” he said.  
  
Sawyer unfolded his arms. “What is it?”  
  
But he didn’t wait for an answer before stepping up to the table. He tugged the twine fastenings apart, undid the latch, and opened the top. The box swung smoothly apart into three levels staggered out on levered hinges. Each level was divided into a number of slots and compartments, and there were sections that could unfold into horizontal wings. The seams were nearly invisible when the box was closed.  
  
“Tackle box,” Benjamin said nervously. “Thought it might be helpful. If you’re, uh. Still doin’ any fishin’.”  
  
“You made this?” Sawyer asked softly. He just looked into the box for a few more seconds, his eyes roaming, then reached inside and pulled out a colorful little bauble. Several of the slots were full of them.  
  
“Wake made the lures,” Benjamin clarified. “The rum’s from him, too.”  
  
Sawyer peered into the bottom compartment of the box before lifting out a bottle made of thick, dark, cloudy glass. It was barely big enough to hold a pint of liquid. The cork and neck of the bottle were sealed over with wax, but the hand-written label had been reduced to a blur of watered-out ink. Despite its humble appearance, Benjamin was given to understand that it was a rather valuable bottle, and he had not pressed for further details about its origins.  
  
Sawyer set the bottle aside on the table somewhat aimlessly. He didn’t seem to know what to do. He kept picking up lures, turning them around in his fingers, then putting them back again. He opened and shut some of the box’s compartments. His face was incomprehensible.  
  
“I barely know him,” he said at last, almost whispering. “I’ve only spoken to him a few times.”  
  
“He’s a quick judge of character,” Benjamin said. “Most of it was River’s idea, truthfully. Wanted to give you some kind of gift. She wrote the note.”  
  
“Oh.” Sawyer squinted into the box, then plucked out a little roll of parchment paper that had been sealed with a blotchy splatter of candle wax. He split the seal with a finger and unrolled the note. Benjamin watched his eyes glide back and forth while he read. At last, his expression cracked, and a little half smile broke through. He re-rolled the sheet of parchment and tucked it back into the box, then closed up the whole contraption. “I ran into her at one of my fishing spots the other day,” he murmured. “She had some good advice.”  
  
He looked up, finally meeting Benjamin’s eyes. His hand lingered on top of the box. He said, “Thank you.”  
  
Benjamin let out a breath he’d been involuntarily holding. “You’re welcome.”  
  
“Not to make assumptions, but is this the lead-in to some kind of conversation you don’t want to have?”  
  
Benjamin shifted his feet. “If you’ll hear it.”  
  
“Want to sit down?”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
They each pulled out a chair and sat, but left their chairs pulled back from the table, allowing the extra distance to exist between them. Sawyer moved the tackle box aside. Benjamin reflected upon the fact that he should have knocked back a shot or two of something strong before coming here. He hadn’t planned what he was going to say. His mind had gone blank when he’d tried to think about this moment. He’d simply hoped that something would come to him at the right time.  
  
“I’ll start by repeatin’ that I’m a damn fool,” he said, which made Sawyer’s mouth twitch. “I don’t expect to be given a, a second chance, or nothin’ like that. I don’t got the right. I was a bastard for… for sayin’ what I said. But I don’t want you thinkin’ that it was because I’ve got any bad opinions of you.”  
  
“Oh?” Sawyer’s face was inscrutable again, but he at least seemed to be listening intently. His head was inclined at a slight angle.  
  
“Mm. I don't know if I can explain well, but I…”  
  
Benjamin frowned at the wall. He wanted to be able to hold eye contact, but he couldn’t. It took him a moment before he could continue.  
  
“It’s been a long time, but I never stopped thinkin’ of Nadia as my wife,” he managed, at last. His voice sounded raw, like he was still sick. “When I was younger, I didn’t think I was the type of man who could be in love with someone. I didn’t understand it: not all the stories, not the way people acted. It didn't mean nothin' to me. But then Nadia… And I…  
  
“I’ve never wanted to… _move on_ from what that felt like. But when I was here—the last time—when I was with you—when we—I forgot about bein’ a married man. For a little while. But then I remembered again, all of a sudden, and, I, I don't know, it was like wakin' from a dream. I couldn't think straight, and I felt terrible. I can’t tell you how terrible. And when I saw you the next mornin’, it reminded me of… how much easier everythin’ felt when I wasn't thinkin' about bein’ married. I hated myself for thinkin’ that, so I got angry at you, too, even though I was the one who…”  
  
He broke off to laugh a little, not happily.  
  
“I know I didn’t act right. And I know there's no excuse, but I felt like I was losin' somethin' important to me. Like I'd thrown it away, carelessly, without even noticin' what I was doin'. I was angry because I don't have much more than memory still left, and if I let those memories be replaced by... by somethin' else, then that's one less thing that I have, one less piece of her. But I... I've..."

The old, familiar feeling was back: his chest too tight, his hands somewhere else, cut off from the rest of him, even though he could see them right there on the edge of the table, the nailbeds gone white from the intensity of his grip. He tried to reel himself together again. He was almost done. He just had to finish this part, the most important part.

"I miss Nadia, but there's nothin' I can do that'll hurt her feelin's anymore, and it ain't right of me to treat someone else bad because of her. And I’d—I’d miss you, too, if I ruined everythin’. I already do. I miss you. You don’t have to forgive me, I can’t expect you to, but I’m sorry. That’s all I’ve got to say for myself. I’m sorry.”  
  
Sawyer was looking down. He didn't do anything right away. And then he just took a deep breath and let it out slowly, making his shoulders rise and fall. Then he raised his eyes. “You’re so fucking intense, man. I wish you’d just told me some of that to start with. I wouldn’t have pushed you so hard. Making you feel worse is the _exact opposite_ of what I wanted."  
  
Fragile hope unfurled in Benjamin’s chest. Sawyer didn’t sound angry.  
  
“I didn’t know how to say it. I, I didn’t really even understand it. I’ve never had to think about it before. Or… I didn’t want to. I don’t know.” Then, for good measure, he said, “I’m sorry,” again, meaning it as much as he’d ever meant anything in his life.  
  
Sawyer put elbows down on the table and rolled his knuckles against his forehead. “Benjamin,” he began, a little helplessly. Then he just sighed. His chin came up, and he made eye contact again. “I’m sorry for putting you in that position. Believe me, that wasn’t what I’d planned. I mean, I, I didn’t have a _plan_ ; I wasn’t going to— I wouldn’t have—”  
  
He broke off momentarily and pinched between his eyes, above the jag where his nose was broken. Then he continued in a very measured voice: “I think it’s clear enough that I would have kept going if you hadn’t wanted to stop, so I can’t pretend like that didn’t mean anything to me. But I want you to understand that I don’t want anything that you don’t want, too, and you made it pretty clear that you don’t want anything else, so that’s that. But I hope you still feel like you can trust me, and that you still want me to be your friend. Because that’s what I’d like.”  
  
“Of course,” Benjamin said, astonished. “Of course. I thought that I’d be the one askin’ you that. I mean, I— Yes. You’re my friend. Of course. And you, you still want me to be your friend, too?”  
  
Sawyer said, “Yes,” decisively, and Benjamin’s stomach churned with unexpected giddiness.  
  
“Oh,” he said. “Well, then. Thank you. Ah. How, ah, have you been?”  
  
That seemed like the right thing to ask.  
  
“Well.” Sawyer waggled his head and his right hand back and forth, scrunching his mouth over to one side. “I’ll be honest with you: that was the worst I’ve been dumped since I was about nineteen, so things have been a little… Well, I’ve had a lot to think about. But I’ve been—it’s been—the world keeps turning, you know? I’m okay. Things are going. Um. What about you? Hunter said you were sick?”  
  
“Oh. You talked to Hunter?” Benjamin tried not to sound apprehensive, with only some success.  
  
“Well, yeah. I run into him all the time. We just talk about the usual things. Don't panic. He was worried about you, that’s all.”  
  
“He mentioned that,” Benjamin admitted. He jerked his shoulders. “Haven’t been sick for quite awhile. Didn’t really care for it. Mm, well, I’ve been helping Wake and his daughter patch up their house a bit. It’s good to have them back. Didn’t think I’d see the day. I expect Wake’ll be wantin’ to reopen the tackle shop soon.”  
  
Sawyer sat up a little straighter. “Wake, yeah. You guys are close?”  
  
“Suppose so. We go back, mm, I don't know how many years now. Used to be the wildest son of a gun you’ve ever met, but he’s reliable as the tide. Good man. River is—well, I don’t know. But they suit one another as well as any family can.”  
  
Sawyer laughed. “I can tell. Hey, do you want—”  
  
That was when they both heard a strange beeping sound, like a far away alarm clock. Benjamin looked around for the source of the noise. “What’s that?”  
  
“Fuck, I lost track of the time. Hang on for a minute.” Sawyer leapt to his feet. He got half way up the stairs before he paused and looked back down. “Oh—you can come along, too, if you want.”  
  
“What’s goin’ on?” Benjamin asked, but he was already on his feet and following Sawyer up the stairs.  
  
“It’s just Freya; I’ve got to feed her.”  
  
“Fr—what?”  
  
But they reached the second floor before Sawyer could explain, and Benjamin saw the situation for himself. A tarp was spread out across the floor, and an array of tree branches, miscellaneous bits of lumber, and other debris filled part of the room, lashed together into what Benjamin inferred was an approximation of a dense forest. And perched amongst the branches was a bird, peeping insistently.  
  
Benjamin recognized the bird.  
  
The bird, having limited cognitive abilities, probably did not recognize him, though it went quiet for a couple of seconds when both of them appeared in the room. They stared at one another.  
  
“I know that bird,” Benjamin almost shouted, pointing. It was the same one—it had to be. One of its wings seemed to be taped against its body. “I chased it around the damn forest!”  
  
“Oh, really? Is that yours, then?”  
  
Sawyer pointed at something hanging on the back of the bathroom door. It was another thing that Benjamin recognized: his lost shirt.  
  
He said, “What the fuck.”  
  
“Peep! Peep!” said Freya.  
  
“Okay, okay, hang on!” Sawyer motioned for Benjamin to stay in place, then edged forward to pick up a little bucket with a loose-fitting lid. The bird hopped away from him as Sawyer approached, but it watched with intense anticipation as he took the lid off the bucket, scooped out a handful of the contents—seeds, or some kind of meal; Benjamin couldn’t see clearly—and scattered it over the windowsill and a few spots on the floor. Then he walked to the far end of the room, took Benjamin’s shirt down from the bathroom door, and returned to where Benjamin was still standing, dumbstruck.  
  
“Here you go,” he said, like this was all extremely normal. Benjamin took his shirt and poked a fingertip through one of the holes. Sawyer had already cleaned it, and all the mud stains were gone.  
  
The bird just continued to watch them for a moment, quiet and unmoving, and then it hopped along the branches and onto the windowsill, where it began to enthusiastically pick through the scattered offerings.  
  
“Unbelievable,” Benjamin muttered. “How’d you catch the blasted thing? Did it just come right into your hands when you asked it politely?”  
  
“Of course not,” Sawyer scoffed. “I had to sing it a little bird song to earn its trust.”  
  
“Ha!” Benjamin burst out. “Right. Foolish of me to ask.”  
  
The actual story was exactly as improbable yet mundane as everything that happened to Sawyer. He’d gone hunting for mushrooms (as one did) the morning after Benjamin had gotten caught in the rain, and noticed something stuck in a bush. The ‘something’ in question was, of course, Benjamin’s shirt, and sleeping inside the shirt was the bird. Through inexplicable means, he’d not only gotten the entire shirt untangled from the bush, but managed to keep the bird safely wrapped in it. He’d borrowed a bird identification book from the library (it had a lot of detailed illustrations, with minimal reading required), and Marian and Zachary had helped him splint its wing and provided an appropriate food mix. Things had been touch-and-go for awhile (birds didn’t do well under stress, apparently), but Freya had pulled through and now seemed relatively content with having the run of half of Sawyer’s house. She’d caught onto the concept of meal times rather quickly.  
  
“It’s a type of nuthatch, so it’s non-migratory,” Sawyer concluded, “and it’s actually a pretty rare species that’s localized to this area. I think it’s female.”  
  
“I see,” Benjamin said, still somewhat mystified. “You call it Freya? Did you know you were namin’ it after one of the Feral Shades?”  
  
“Oh, well, it just seemed helpful to give it a name, and I couldn’t think of anything else. Marian and Zachary got a kick out of it. I don’t know.” Sawyer paused. They’d been watching Freya pick through the feed mixture for a few minutes, both of them leaning against the wall with a couple feet of space between them. Then Sawyer asked, with a curious sort of hesitancy, “Do you believe in that sort of thing? The Feral Shades?”  
  
“They’re an important part of the town’s culture,” Benjamin said.  
  
Sawyer looked at him sideways. “That’s not much of an answer.”  
  
“I don’t know,” he sighed. He dropped his eyes from the bird and looked at the space between his feet. “Sometimes I don’t like believin’ in things that abandon you when you need them. But I suppose I do. Yeah.”  
  
“You think you’ve been abandoned?”  
  
“It’s what people say. The bad weather, the bad air, the wildlife leavin’. The Shades’re supposed to look after those things.”  
  
“Right, but—well, Sugar Blossom seems pretty nice to me, compared to some of the places I’ve seen. So maybe some of Feral Shades are still involved? Or they require some kind of mutual help to do what they’re supposed to?”  
  
“You seem to know a lot about the Shades,” Benjamin observed.  
  
Sawyer laughed vaguely and said, “I really don’t,” and for awhile he was quiet. Then he pushed himself away from the wall and said, “Hey, want me to fix your shirt?”  
  
The shirt was hanging, sad and limp, from Benjamin’s balled fist. He eyed it doubtfully. “Think you can?”  
  
“Well, it won’t look like your Sunday best, but I can at least make it a little less see-through. You can wear it while you’re painting or whatever. Won’t have to worry about it getting messed up.”  
  
“Well, alright. If it’s no trouble to you. Thank you.”  
  
“Do you want to come back downstairs, or just stay up here?”  
  
It was a little cold upstairs, and there weren’t any chairs, but it was more comfortable, in a way, than sitting in the room where he’d kissed Sawyer.  
  
So he said, “Here’s fine.”  
  
Sawyer nodded and turned to lope down the stairs two at a time. When he returned, he was carrying a little lidded tin. He motioned for Benjamin to give him the shirt, then sat cross-legged on the floor and pried open the lid of the tin. It was filled with thread and needles and a pin cushion, all jumbled together with buttons and random scraps of fabric. Benjamin failed to hold in a laugh.  
  
“Just like my grandma’s.”  
  
“Hey, look, grandmas know what they’re doing. It’s an honor to have something in common with grandmas.” Sawyer took his time selecting a length of thread, then set to work on the shirt. After a moment, though, he paused long enough to pat the floor next to him. His eyes flickered up, meeting Benjamin’s for just a second.  
  
Benjamin lowered himself to the floor and arranged himself as comfortably as he could. It wasn’t easy on his back, but just standing over Sawyer while he worked seemed discourteous.  
  
He watched Freya eating as they sat there on the floor, Sawyer’s hands flashing deftly in the corner of his vision. It was strange that the room was still entirely bare and empty except for the branches and other items brought to create a habitat for the bird. Perhaps Sawyer had been planning to commission a new set of furniture but hadn’t done so because of… what had happened. Probably best not to raise the question.  
  
But after a couple of minutes, Benjamin shifted slightly and dared to ask: “I was wonderin’ if you still wanted to finish the book.”  
  
Sawyer looked up as he bit through a piece of string. “ _The Blacksmith’s Apprentice_?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Well, yeah. I was thinking of asking asking Fable if she could get a copy of the tape. I hate not knowing how something ends.”  
  
“Ah. Well.” Benjamin patted his jacket pocket a little self-consciously. “I checked it out of the library again, if, if you’d like me to read the last bit.”  
  
Sawyer sat up straighter and stared at him with an expression that was equally hopeful and surprised. “I’d like that.”  
  
So Benjamin pulled the book from his jacket pocket, flipped it to the final chapter of the book, and began reading. It was not a particularly long chapter, and after a few minutes Benjamin noticed that the quick, efficient pace of Sawyer’s sewing had slowed. He didn’t seem to want to finish before the book was done. And Benjamin, without meaning to, also slowed down, drawing out the words into a languid near-drawl, and when he reached the last couple of pages, he suddenly thought _I wish there were more_ , because he didn’t want it to have to end, this simple easiness between them. But there was no stopping the end of the book, and, invariably, Benjamin found himself reading out the final line: “… _he reached the fork in the road and turned east, in the direction of home._ ” Pause. “The end.”  
  
He closed the book. Sawyer tied off a knot in his string and said, “Not a sad ending. Good.”  
  
“Hmm. Open to interpretation,” Benjamin countered.  
  
“Nah. It’s supposed to be good. Trust me.” Sawyer grinned and held up the shirt. “Want to try this on? I want to see if I missed anywhere.”  
  
So they both stood up, and Benjamin tried on the shirt. It wasn’t quite roomy enough to go on over the one he was wearing, so he had to partially undress to be able to put it on. It was a little embarrassing, but Sawyer just inspected him with professional scrutiny. He had, in fact, missed a hole beneath one of the arms, so Benjamin changed back while Sawyer finished the job. Then there was nothing else to do: the book was done, and his shirt was fixed, and Sawyer had put his needle and thread away, and Freya was resting quietly on the floor, sated. Benjamin put his jacket back on.  
  
“Suppose I should be goin’,” Benjamin said, and Sawyer put the repaired shirt into his hands and walked him back downstairs to the front door.  
  
“Thank you for the tackle box,” he said. “It was good to— I’m glad you came over. You’re, um. Always welcome here. And—thank you for bringing the book.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” Benjamin said, feeling something that was, perhaps, shyness. “And you’re, uh, welcome to visit, too. Boots would be happy to see you.”  
  
Sawyer laughed.  
  
“Good-night,” Benjamin said, and Sawyer also said, “good-night.”  
  
Benjamin turned to go—and then he turned back again, and took a step forward, and put his arms around Sawyer, and pulled him into an embrace. Sawyer stumbled into him. He let go almost immediately, face warm.  
  
“I realized I hadn’t done this before,” he mumbled, “with you.”  
  
“That’s true,” Sawyer said in a hushed voice.  
  
Then it was Sawyer who was moving forward, suddenly, and drawing him in, and Benjamin felt Sawyer’s nose and cheek against the side of his head. His own arms jerked up again, and he folded them around Sawyer’s back and held onto him in return. His chin was on Sawyer's shoulder. They stayed like that for a moment. He could hear Sawyer breathing near his ear. His eyes turned hazy, and when they finally drew part, at the same time, Sawyer was blinking heavily.  
  
“Good-night,” Benjamin said again, and then he had to leave before he did something stupid. He walked rapidly past the barn, and past Mademoiselle, who followed him to the bridge, and he turned onto the road, as it were, east, in the direction of home.


End file.
